Sen. Smith won’t say if she supports or opposes ‘court packing’

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg added yet another volatile issue to the 2020 campaign. After President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, some Democrats raised the possibility of retaliating by "packing the court" with more members and filling those positions with liberal judges.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has repeatedly declined to say whether he would support such a plan. At a town hall meeting on ABC-TV Thursday night he said, "if I answered the question all the focus would be on what’s Biden going to do if he wins." He went on to say, "I’m not a fan" of court packing, "it depends how this turns out."

In an interview on "At Issue" on Friday, Democratic U.S. Senator Tina Smith also declined to say if she would vote for a court-packing bill.

"It is completely premature to talk about what we would do with the Supreme Court because we don’t know what the situation is going to be," Smith said. In terms very similar to Biden, Smith said, "I’m going to wait and see what happens. But let’s be clear here. What is happening right now is the Republicans are packing the court by pushing through the Supreme Court nominee against the will of the American public who believe the next president, whoever that person may be, should be the one who appoints the next Supreme Court justice. They changed their rules in order to push people onto the Supreme Court that they want to have there and that’s what they’re trying to distract us all from now…"

You can see the entire interview with Smith on that and other topics Sunday morning at 10 a.m. on "At Issue." Republican challenger Jason Lewis will be a guest on next week’s show.