Breaking: President Trump to Announce SCOTUS Pick This Week

President Trump announced this morning that he will name a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg later this week.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live, we discussed the latest Supreme Court vacancy and its impact on the election. President Trump has said that he’ll announce his pick this week and that the nominee is likely to be a woman. This pick has the potential to change the Supreme Court for a generation.

President Trump was asked about his pick on Fox News this morning. Here’s what he said:

I think it will be on Friday or Saturday, and we want to pay respect. It looks like we will have, probably, services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think in all due respect we should wait until the services are over for Justice Ginsburg, so we’re looking at probably Friday or Saturday.

Since last week a lot of things have changed in politics, the Supreme Court, and even with the focus on Capitol Hill, especially the U.S. Senate. You’ve got two spotlights, as I see it. You’ve got one spotlight on when President Trump will announce the replacement for Justice Ginsburg who passed away on Friday after a battle with cancer. He has said that will likely happen in the next few days.

But the second spotlight is on the U.S. Senate. There’s going to be a lot of politics being played around this issue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said that the Senate will have a vote on President Trump’s nominee. The Democrats responded by calling him a hypocrite for refusing to hold a vote for Merrick Garland in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The response is pretty simple. In 2016, you had an outgoing President from one party trying to nominate a new Supreme Court justice and a Senate majority controlled by the other party. In what reality is a Senate controlled by one party in the heat of an election year going to approve the lifetime appointment of a justice selected by a President from the opposing party who is not up for reelection? It would never happen. And if the roles were reversed, it still wouldn’t happen. No Democrat-controlled Senate would approve a Republican-nominated justice.

Elections have consequences. The people of the United States put the Senate majority there on purpose as a check on outgoing President Obama, and they sent them back in the next two elections to support the President Trump’s priorities.

Fast forward to right now. It’s a Republican Senate and a Republican President that the voters have chosen. They chose that makeup. And President Trump is not an “outgoing” President. He is running for re-election. That’s very different. He may very well be President for another four years. He still represents the American people. That includes who he nominates to the Supreme Court.

When you look back in history when situations like this happen in an election year and the President and the Senate majority are from the same party, the Supreme Court nominees are almost always confirmed.

Elections have consequences.

The full broadcast is complete with much more discussion and analysis by our team on this Supreme Court vacancy, who may be in the running, the history of Supreme Court picks made in election years, and much more.

Watch the full broadcast below.