Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Friday that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has “become a destructive force” for the Senate, dating back to when he urged his Democratic colleagues to oppose former President George Bush’s Supreme Court nominees.
During an interview on Fox News, the South Carolina senator praised President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch as being a “home-run selection.”
Turning to Schumer, who on Thursday said Democrats will filibuster Gorsuch, Graham said is another example of how the moderate Democrats are no longer in control of their party.
“Sen. Schumer has become I think a destructive force for the United States Senate a long time ago when he filibustered Bush’s nominations. This about the Left taking over the Democrat Party,” Graham said. “This is why Trump won.”
Graham defended Gorsuch as being “as mainstream a judge as you’ll ever find on the conservative side.” He added: “We could not have picked a more qualified nominee as a Republican.”
Back in 2013, the Democrats, who controlled the Senate under then-Sen. Harry Reid, triggered the “nuclear option” to bypass Republican opposition to former President Barack Obama’s executive and judicial nominees by requiring only a simple majority vote to pass them. That move did not include Supreme Court nominees, but Graham said Republicans will go there if provoked.
“If they filibuster this man we’ll have no other option but to change the rules because if we don’t that means president trump can never make a selection to the supreme court and I will not allow that to happen,” he said.
When Graham was asked whether rumors of some Democrats being open to supporting Gorsuch as part of some kind of deal, he dismissed their criticism of Gorsuch as being “political theater because they’re willing to go forward if they can control the process down the road.”
