Vice President Joe Biden said Monday that an excerpt of a speech he gave in 1992 about opposing a hypothetical Supreme Court nomination in an election year was “not an accurate description of my views.”
“It is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow or within the next several weeks or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not, and not name a nominee until after the November election is completed,” Biden says in the speech, which was posted by C-SPAN.
Sen. Joe Biden in 1992 says President Bush should “not name a nominee until after the November election…” #SCOTUShttps://t.co/setQGLzePt
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 22, 2016
In a statement provided to The Hill, Biden said that in the speech he also encouraged the Senate and the President to “work together to overcome partisan differences” and bring about a functioning court, a position he said he maintains today.
“While some say that my comments in June 1992 contributed to a more politicized nomination process, they didn’t prevent the Senate from fulfilling its constitutional duties, because there was no vacancy at the time,” Biden said in the statement.
