President Joe Biden has warned of the possibility that Donald Trump could get to appoint two new Supreme Court justices if the former president wins November’s election.
Appearing at a star-studded fundraising gala on Saturday night, Biden explained on stage that “the next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees.”
He added that Trump had previously appointed two justices who were “very negative in terms of the rights of individuals.”
“I think it is one of the scariest parts,” Biden said.
His comments came at the event held in Los Angeles, where the president was joined by host Jimmy Kimmel and former President Barack Obama – some Hollywood notables such as George Clooney and Julia Roberts also in attendance.
During an on-stage discussion with Kimmel and Obama, Kimmel explained that it had been almost two years since the “largely Trump-appointed” Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that was initially put in place to protect the right to have an abortion in the United States.
“These threats to abortion rights, to women’s rights, to even to birth control and IVF are not in our liberal imaginations anymore,” Kimmel said.
“These very personal, intimate decisions, are now being made by nine unelected judges — one of whom flies his flag upside down. One of the others drives around in a $267,000 gift on vacations,” the late show host added, making references to past controversies surrounding justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
“And I think we are all wondering, what can we do about this?” Kimmel said, posing the question to the current president.
Biden responded with a confident: “Elect me again.”
Biden went on to explain that the next president will possibly have two new Supreme Court nominees, and spoke on the “idea that if he [Trump] is reelected, he’s going to appoint two more flying flags upside down.”
The president was also making reference to reports that the wife of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, a justice who was not appointed by Trump, supposedly flew a flag upside down outside their Virginia home in 2021, not long after the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
The court justice is facing backlash for the apparent upside-down flag, which is a symbol used by some Trump supporters reflect the former president’s false claim the US presidential election was rigged.
However, Alito told The New York Times that his wife, Martha-Ann, flew the flag in response to signs in neighbors’ gardens.
Alito claims to have “had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” he said in a statement emailed to the newspaper.
During Saturday’s campaign event at the Peacock Theatre, which raised around $28m, Biden also accused the Supreme Court of having “never been as out of kilter as it is today, I mean never.”
Alongside discussing the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, Biden also touched on how Justice Clarence Thomas said other rulings should be reconsidered, such as contraception, CNN reported.
Biden also took a more serious tone as he laid out the stakes of the election: “The idea [that] he’s threatening retribution. This is the United States of America. Did you ever think you would hear anything like this?”
