Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday threw cold water on the GOP assertion that Judge Gorsuch will have an easier path to winning confirmation to the Supreme Court after privately calling President Trump’s condemnations of judges recent decisions “demoralizing” and “disheartening.”
Gorsuch, Schumer said, shared the same sentiment with him during their sit-down meeting earlier this week, but it wasn’t enough to prove that he could truly exercise independence from Trump when weighing the legality of his administration’s policies.
“To whisper in a closed room behind closed doors that ‘I am disheartened’ and not [publicly] comment on what the president has done … does not show independence,” Schumer said. “It shows a desire to have an appearance of independence.”
Schumer stuck to his earlier belief that Gorsuch has not had “a good start” on his path to confirmation after he failed to answer several questions the Democratic leader asked him during their meeting.
“I haven’t made up my mind — Judge Gorsuch may go further, but right now it’s an uphill fight to get my support,” he said during remarks on the Senate floor.
Republicans have pointed out that Gorsuch is very limited in what he can say in these meetings becuase judicial ethis prevent him for commenting on political matters.
“He has also emphasized the importance of an independent judiciary, and while he made clear that he was not referring to any specific case, he said that he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing,” former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who is helping shepherd the nomination through the Senate, said in a statement.
Schumer also condemned Trump’s tweet last Friday disparaging Judge James Robart’s decision to temporarily block the president’s temporary ban on immigrants and travelers from seven majority Muslim countries.
Trump first called Robart a “so-called judge,” said his ruling was a “terrible decision,” and then suggested he would be responsible if a terrorist attack did occur.
“Our president all too often seems fact-averse,” Schumer said. “Not one terrorist attack has been perpetrated on U.S. soil from a refugee from any of these countries — not one.”
Schumer said it’s particularly “dangerous” when the president attacks a judge’s decision as potentially leading to more without any facts to back it up because, “it diverts us from going after the big, gaping holes” that are the real threats for potential terrorism in this country: “Lone wolves and the visa waiver program.”
Two lone wolves, Schumer said, launched deadly terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., and the visa waiver program needs serious reform because it allows 29 countries to send people to the U.S. without going through background checks.
Schumer pledged to work with Republicans to overhaul the visa waiver program instead of relying on Trump’s executive action on immigration and travel from seven countries.
That temporary ban, he said, does nothing to protect the country from terrorism but further “encourages lone wolves” because it further isolates them.
