RUSH EXCERPT:
COLBERT: "So the hearings are going on, we don’t know whether Dr. Ford is going to testify next week or under what conditions she will testify, what they will give her, whether they will give her an FBI investigation before she testifies, but do you think the nomination process in general is irreparably damaged following the Republicans not allowing Merrick Garland to be heard, recriminations from one side out, one side hitting against the other."
CLINTON: "It is one reason I think a lot of Americans are just fed up with the whole political process, because in a democracy, you have to have at least enough trust to be able to work with each other and try to, you know, solve difficult problems. And when the Republicans refused to give a distinguished judge appointed by President Obama even the courtesy of meetings let alone a hearing, that sent such a terrible message. Now, what they — in this case is to hold back information. They have not provided all of the information which was always made available for other nominees, and they are trying to rush this through to the detriment of the American public, who deserves to have answers to whatever charges might be presented. So I am hoping that at some point there will be an agreement to have an investigation, it would be very easy for the FBI to go back and finish the background investigation, to investigate these charges and, you know, maybe find out there is nothing to them, maybe find out there is something to them, but at least have that investigation completed and I think that is what is a fair request for due process to be asked for."
COLBERT: "Can you sympathize at all with the Republicans —"
[ cheers and applause ]
COLBERT: "What some of the Republicans are saying any call for an investigation is just another attempt to create a political football. You and your husband were both the subjects of investigations while your husband was in office. Do you think that it is possible to have an investigation that takes place in a public forum like the Senate that doesn’t become a political football? So do you have any sympathy for their argument that this is just going to turn into another political fight as opposed to a search for the truth?"
CLINTON: "No, I have no sympathy, and the reason —"
[ cheers and applause ]
CLINTON: "You know, I know that, you know, in a fast-moving world we have so much information coming at us and we have — we have to keep moving but the Merrick Garland precedent was the crassest most cynical kinds of politics that could be even imagined, okay, so you move on, a new nominee, and the Republicans won’t even give up a significant percentage of the information that should be made available to the Senate to do their job. You know, they basically have stonewalled and they want to push this through and then along comes another potential charge that has to be investigated and they have done everything they can to try to ignore it, to undermine it as opposed to saying, okay, we are the stewards of the public trust. We are looking at giving somebody a lifetime job on the most important court in the land, so, yeah, we owe it to our constituents, we owe it to our constitution, our process to do the job right and they are the ones who have turned it into a political football and I don’t have any idea what they are going to decide to do, but I know what I wish. Have an investigation. It won’t take that long. Let the investigation go forward, present it and them go from there."