Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said unequivocally Friday night that President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee to fill the vacancy of late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
“In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise,” McConnell continued. “Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”
McConnell added that “by contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary.”
“Once again, we will keep our promise,” he said. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
In May 2019, McConnell, R-Ky., made clear that should a vacancy materialize in the midst of the 2020 election cycle, the GOP-majority Senate would likely “fill it.”
McConnell’s comments last year were met with criticism from Democrats who accused him of hypocrisy, based on the treatment of former President Barack Obamas Supreme Court nominee and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals chief Judge Merrick Garland.
Obama nominated Garland to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away in 2016, but McConnell and Senate Republicans refused to hold a hearing or vote on his nomination, citing the imminent 2016 presidential election.
Speaking to Fox News last year, McConnell suggested his stance was not hypocritical -- because in 2020, Republicans would control both the White House and the Senate, unlike Democrats in 2016, who controlled only the White House.
More at:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcconnell-supreme-court-nominee-vote-floor