Sen. Lindsey Graham said he will support President Trump’s effort to forge ahead with a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg ahead of the election, which is less than two months away.
The South Carolina Republican, who heads the Judiciary Committee that holds confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees, made the announcement over Twitter and cited past actions by Democrats as justification for his decision.
“The two biggest changes regarding the Senate and judicial confirmations that have occurred in the last decade have come from Democrats,” Graham said.
He pointed out that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada invoked the “nuclear option” in 2013, which made it so that only a simple majority vote was needed to overcome a filibuster for executive appointments and judicial nominees (but not for the Supreme Court), instead of the 60-vote supermajority, as was the previous practice. Republicans then abolished the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017, leading to what is now a simple majority vote to confirm new justices.
Graham also took aim at the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, which lasted a lengthy 89 days and was fraught with controversy after accusations of sexual assault surfaced.
“Chuck Schumer and his friends in the liberal media conspired to destroy the life of Brett Kavanaugh and hold that Supreme Court seat open,” Graham said.
“In light of these two events, I will support President @realDonaldTrump in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg,” he added.
In light of these two events, I will support President @realDonaldTrump in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg.
#3
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 19, 2020
The remarks come after a video of Graham from four years ago resurfaced on social media after Ginsburg’s death. In the clip, he said that he would not support moving forward a nominee before the 2016 election. Republicans had blocked then-President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia that year.
“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,” Graham said.
Ginsburg died on Friday at the age of 87 from complications associated with metastatic pancreatic cancer.
