In a shock to no one, President Donald Trump quickly shed Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) specious rationale for blocking Merrick Garland’s confirmation process, saying that he would put up another Supreme Court justice before the 2020 election if the opportunity arose.
“Would I do that? Of course,” he told the Hill.
As a candidate, Trump backed McConnell’s position, though he now says that everything has changed since Republicans hold both the White House and the Senate.
“They couldn’t get him approved. That’s the other problem because they didn’t have the Senate. If they had the Senate, they would have done it,” Trump said of Democrats then.
“We have a great Senate. We have great people,” he continued. “If we could get him approved, I would definitely do it. No, I’d do it a lot sooner than that. I’d do it. If there were three days left, I’d put somebody up hoping that I could get ’em done in three days, okay?”
McConnell said at the time that whoever was elected in 2016 should get to choose the justice to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat in an unprecedented move that planted deep-seated and lingering fury in Democrats of all stripes.