Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday said choosing the next Supreme Court justice is a high-stakes game and allowing Donald Trump to make such a decision is “a gamble.”
“If Trump’s elected president, it probably is a little more unknown than if there’s a [Sen. Ted] Cruz elected president,” Grassley, Iowa’s senior U.S. senator, said Wednesday during a radio interview with an Iowa-based station.
“I would have to admit it’s a gamble,” he added.
Grassley, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has vowed to block the Senate from holding confirmation hearings on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland.
The Iowa Republican said he hasn’t “second-guessed” his decision to block Obama’s pick but he has thought twice about the potential impact it could have if Trump succeeds in his campaign for the GOP nomination, makes it to the Oval Office and is tasked with putting forth his own nominee.
“It’s a gamble on who’s going to be the next president of the United States. I second-guess that. But I guess that’s a point that I’m willing to take,” he said.
Trump, meanwhile, has not been relatively mum about the individuals he would consider nominating to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.
During a press conference at the site of his upcoming hotel in Washington, D.C., last month, the billionaire assured reporters that he would release a list of 10 conservative judges who he would consider for the nomination “sometime next week.”
The Trump campaign has yet to release any such list.
