Trump Dismisses Democratic Push to Pack Supreme Court
President Trump on Tuesday rejected the idea that has gained traction among Democrats of adding seats to the Supreme Court, saying it will “never happen.”
“I wouldn’t entertain that,” the president said Tuesday at a press conference at the White House. “If they can’t catch up through the ballot box winning an election, they want to try a different way.”
“We would have no interest in that whatsoever. It will never happen.” he added.”“It won’t happen, I guarantee you, for six years.”
With two conservative justices recently appointed to the high court, the proposal to add seats has picked up steam among Democratic presidential candidates, including Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand as well as former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke.
“We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” Harris said. “We have to take this challenge head-on, and everything is on the table to do that.”
“It’s not just about expansion, it’s about depoliticizing the Supreme Court,” Warren said.
O’Rourke suggested a more convoluted solution as “an idea we should explore.”
“What if there were five justices selected by Democrats, five justices selected by Republicans, and those ten then picked five more justices independent of those who chose the first ten?” the El Paso-area former lawmaker said last week at a campaign event in Iowa.
Gillibrand said she would “need to think more about it.”
During the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency, Senate Republicans refused to even consider Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, who would have replaced the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a move that riled Democrats. Since taking office, two of Trump’s picks have been confirmed to the court, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Democrats have accused the GOP hypocritically engaging in court packing themselves by approving the two Supreme Court justices as well as many other conservative judges on the lower courts.
