President Barack Obama said Monday that Republicans’ persistent concerns about their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, should prompt them to hold a vote on his Supreme Court nominee.
“It seems to me [Republicans would] be better off going ahead and giving a hearing and a vote to somebody that they themselves in the past have said is well-qualified, is fair, and to treat the Supreme Court with the seriousness and the sense that it’s beyond politics,” Obama said in an interview with Buzzfeed News. “Precisely because this election year has been so crazy, precisely because you have a number of Republicans who have said that they’re concerned about their nominee, it shows you why you don’t want to politicize a Supreme Court appointment.”
Senate Republicans have vowed not to hold hearings or a vote for Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, citing the contentious nature of the 2016 election. They hold that the next president should be allowed to nominate a justice to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat, which has been vacant since Scalia’s death in February.
“My hope is that the closer we get to the summer, and the more pressure that viewers are putting on senators just to do their job, and to give the guy a hearing, give him a vote, then more and more Republican senators will recognize that the position they’re taking is not tenable,” Obama told Buzzfeed.
As the President noted, many of the Republicans blocking Garland’s nomination, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA), have previously praised the Garland as an even-handed moderate.
Grassley insisted last week that he trusted Donald Trump to pick “the right type of people” to sit on the court.
