Marco Rubio accuses Democrats of anti-Catholic bias and gets a smackdown from Rep. Ilhan Omar

Marco Rubio, like most Republican Senators, is doing everything he can to help Trump ram his latest Supreme Court nominee through the Senate confirmation process.

Now that Trump is expected to momentarily announce that he will nominate Amy Coney Barrett —a former clerk for right-wing jurist Antonin Scalia and someone who is the polar opposite of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg  — to replace the woman whose death created the ill-timed opening on the court, Rubio has sent a tweet that already accuses Democrats of being anti-Catholic after criticism of Barrett’s membership in an extremist religious organization not formally affiliated with the Catholic Church.

Sign the petition to tell Mitch McConnell: No vote on a new Supreme Court Justice until after inauguration!

Rubio is perhaps confused about the status of the tightly knit charismatic Christian group called People of Praise that Barrett is a long-standing member of and about the Democrats who are attacking Barrett for her affiliation with the extreme conservative activists who are her fellow members in the group.

Firstly, it is an ecumenical group that is not sanctioned by or a division of the Catholic Church, even though 90% of its members declare themselves to be part of that faith.

Secondly, the Democrats nominated a devout, church-going Catholic, Joe Biden, as their presidential nominee.

Thirdly, the Supreme Court already has five Catholic Justices among its remaining eight members, meaning that the 62.5 percent of the court identify with the religion, a number that would grow to 66.6 percent if Barrett were to be confirmed and that far exceeds the 22 percent of the U.S. population who belong to the church.

Most of the Catholic justices were appointed by Republican presidents, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. The only Catholic jurist on the court who was appointed by a Democratic president is Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whom I can personally attest is a Catholic since we were in the same class together in the Bronx’s parochial Cardinal Spellman High School until we graduated. I have the yearbook to prove it.

It’s hardly like the population of U.S. Catholics should have any fear of underrepresentation on the Supreme Court at this point, but the religious affiliations of the justices should make no difference if the judges are doing their jobs properly and basing their decisions on the text of the Constitution and the historical precedents of the court.

Progressive Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) noticed the hypocrisy in the values that Rubio professes to support in his video comments compared to the actual record of what Donald Trump and his Republican enablers like Senator Rubio have done in this country since taking office, including the separation of families and the demonization of immigrants, among the many other actions the administration has taken that Jesus Christ himself would be ashamed to see associated with his name.

Her reply to Senator Rubio’s assertion — that Democrats’ insistence on maintaining the separation of church and state that is mandated by the U.S. Constitution is tantamount to requiring Supreme Court nominees to abandon or hide their faith — hopefully helped remind Rubio that Trump and the GOP might be singing a different tune if the nominee was, like Representative Omar, a practicing Muslim.

Somebody needs to tell Rubio.

It’s unlikely that he’ll be reading this article, but, hopefully, the electorate will give him the response directly at the ballot box, repudiating the GOP’s judicial nominee hypocrisy by sending Donald Trump packing along with the Republican majority in the Senate.

Until then simply ignore Rubio’s insane allegations and do what you can to elect the practicing Catholic— Joe Biden — to erase the cynical exploitation of religious values being practiced by the current occupant of the White House.

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Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.