Donald Trump is clearly on the same page as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when it comes to the replacement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Friday after decades of public service. Despite the precedent that Senate Republicans themselves set when they refused to hold a vote on then-President Barack Obama’s nomination to replace Antonin Scalia on the court in 2016, McConnell and now Trump have expressed support for the idea of rushing through a replacement even though the presidential election is already underway. On Saturday, Trump said Ginsburg should be replaced “without delay.”
He tweeted:
‘@GOP We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!’
.@GOP We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2020
In other words — Trump and his allies in the Republican Party are craven political opportunists who will stop at just about nothing to remake the nation’s highest court in their image, it seems. Trump already got to fill the seat that opened up during the last year of Obama’s term, and now, despite the precedent that Senate Republicans established of waiting until after an imminent presidential election to handle a Supreme Court nomination, Trump sounds like he wants to rush a new confirmation process to completion.
It’s worth noting — Trump self-importantly insisted that the “people… so proudly elected us,” but more Americans voted against Trump in the 2016 election than voted for him — about 2.8 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. 2.8 million! Trump has no place to talk about some kind of mandate from the people of the United States — none at all, especially if he loses by as big of a margin in the upcoming presidential election as polls predict. If Trump does get a replacement for Ginsburg confirmed to the court, then the court would be thoroughly biased in favor of conservatives, with three justices at once who were nominated by Trump himself. Solutions could include impeaching Brett Kavanaugh and/or adding spots to the court, both of which would hinge on Democratic control of the Senate.
McConnell claims that the original “principle” was that Supreme Court seats shouldn’t be filled in an election year if the White House and Senate are controlled by different parties. He’s making all of this up. Check out Twitter’s response to Trump below:
