Mitch McConnell hints he'd steal more Supreme Court seats from Democratic presidents

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has come up with another excuse to steal Supreme Court seats from Democrats in case his own party loses the White House next year.

McConnell said Thursday that should a Democrat defeat Trump next year and a Supreme Court seat become available in 2021 under the GOP-controlled Senate, he would give a hearing and a vote on the nominee — but that they would likely be voted down.

And he only made that promise for the first year of a Democratic president’s four-year term. 

“Obviously if you have a vacancy in the first year of a term of a president, you’re not going to fail to fill that vacancy for a very lengthy period of time, no matter what the political composition is,” McConnell told reporters, according to The Hill. “The nominee might or might not be confirmed, depending on how controversial the nominee is.”

McConnell is infamous for not scheduling hearings or votes on President Barack Obama’s federal judicial nominees, most notably Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016. Over the past several years, McConnell has invented new “rules” to ensure that only Republican presidents are allowed to pack federal benches, and his rules change with the wind.

In May, McConnell said that if there were a Supreme Court vacancy in the last year of Trump’s presidency, he’d fill it, despite denying Obama the same courtesy. 

“Oh, we’d fill it,” he said then, grinning.

Such a lack of ethics isn’t surprising coming from an obstructionist who has blocked over 100 bills that have passed out of the House since the Democrats took power in January 2019. 

And it may explain why he’s the most unpopular U.S. senator in the country. 

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.