As news broke about Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer retiring, speculation ramped up that President Biden could tap embattled Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him — keeping his promise to appoint a black woman to the high court while opening possibilities of a less politically tainted running mate for 2024.
Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday endorsed the unlikely notion that Harris could get the nomination as a way to end the controversies surrounding her.
“I think it’s a theory that could be credible,” McEnany said while co-hosting the “Outnumbered” show on Fox News.
The improbable idea was floated by co-host Harris Faulker amid the breaking reports that Breyer plans to retire after the court recesses at the end of June.
Biden has said repeatedly he would pick a black woman as his first Supreme Court nominee and Faulkner said that “it’s hard to not to see, at least, [Harris] makes the list.”
“They don’t know what to do with Kamala Harris in the White House right now,” Faulkner said. “I can’t be the only person seeing this.”
McEnany, who was a White House spokeswoman for President Donald Trump, told Faulkner, “I think you’re right” and said the possibility “was playing in my mind from the moment we heard about this retirement.”
“Politically speaking, if you are not happy with your vice president, and you want her in a different role, there’s no greater role than on the Supreme Court,” she said.
“I think she’s at least on the shortlist.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the possibility near the top of her daily press briefing, saying, “I’m not going to speak to any considerations, preparations, lists.”
Psaki also noted that Biden “has every intention, as he said before, of running for re-election and for running for re-election with Vice President Harris on the ticket as his partner.”
When asked if Harris would be able to vote on her own nomination in the evenly split US Senate, where she is the tie-breaker for Democrats, Psaki said, “I would have to check on the specifics.”
Supreme Court nominees only need a simple majority for confirmation since Republicans voted to lower the threshold from 60 votes in 2017.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California’s Berkley School of Law, told The Post that he was unaware of any “constitutional limit” that would prevent Harris from voting to confirm herself.
“It certainly would be unprecedented,” he added.
New York University School of Law professor Barry Friedman, an expert on constitutional law, called it a “great question,” adding, “I think: yes. But I don’t know.”
Harris has been dogged by criticism since Biden tapped her to deal with the ongoing migration crisis at the southern border, and multiple reports have detailed dissension among her staffers, who’ve called her a “bully” and said they’re “treated like s–t.”
Her office has also been rocked by a series of high-profile resignations, including that of adviser and chief spokeswoman Symone Sanders, who left without having another job lined up but recently landed a gig with the cable news station MSNBC.
Last month, Harris — a former US senator, California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney — told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that she wasn’t angling for a seat on the Supreme Court.
