In 2016, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced Republicans’ plan to keep the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat open until the next president took office, a year away, he issued a conclusive statement: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”
On Sunday, after the confirmation of the second Supreme Court justice nominated by President Donald Trump — and with the potential for more Supreme Court nominations before Election Day in 2020 — McConnell rewrote his own invented rule in Republicans’ favor.
McConnell now claims that in blocking Obama nominee Merrick Garland’s confirmation process for months, “we simply followed the tradition in America, which is that if you have a Senate of a different party than the President you don’t fill a vacancy created in a presidential [election] year.”
By retroactively narrowing his own rule, McConnell implied he would work to confirm a Supreme Court nominee referred by a Republican president, namely Trump, to the Republican-controlled Senate.
Fox News’ Chris Wallace pressed McConnell on his new rule later in the interview, watch below:
McConnell now implies he will consider a Trump SCOTUS nominee in the 2020 election year, if Republicans hold the Senate in 2018: pic.twitter.com/1mApkA7uVD
— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) October 7, 2018
CBS’ John Dickerson also pressed McConnell on the point in an interview on “Face the Nation” Sunday:
Here he is making the same point to CBS' John Dickerson: pic.twitter.com/q4aJR0vOpc
— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) October 7, 2018
