Donald Trump has a message for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Bush family Mitt Romney and any other Republican who refused to endorse him: Remember the Supreme Court.
In his post-convention remarks in Cleveland Friday, Trump said he would appoint a conservative judge to the Supreme Court. If his detractors don’t vote for him, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would end up changing the makeup of the court by appointing liberal justices, he said.
“Whether you’re the governor of Ohio, whether you’re a senator from Texas, or any of the other people that I beat so easily and so badly, you have no choice,” Trump said. “You gotta go for Trump. Supreme Court justices. If Hillary Clinton gets in, she is going to replace … Justice Scalia, and we are going to get somebody as close to him and his views and his philosophy as possible.”
Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination on the last night of the GOP convention Thursday, and the notion of replacing Supreme Court justices was a theme in his acceptance speech.
President Obama has nominated Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat, but the Republican-controlled Senate has blocked his nomination. Senate Republicans have argued voters should choose the next justice with their presidential vote in November.
Trump said that state of limbo proves that his conservative detractors have no choice but to come to him by November.
“Whether you’re a hater or a lover … just remember Supreme Court justices,” he said.
