Donald Trump suggests Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s last wish was false

Donald Trump has suggested that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s last wish was feigned by her political opponents in the Democratic Party.

After the death of Judge Ginsburg on Friday, his granddaughter Clara Spera issued her final statement to Americans: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

Trump, however, intends to name a successor “without delay.”

Speaking to Fox News overnight, the president of the United States questioned the veracity of Judge Ginsburg’s last words, on the theory that they were actually written by Democrats.

“I don’t know if she said that. Or was it written by Adam Schiff, Schumer and Pelosi? I would lean more towards the latter,” Trump told the Fox & Friends morning show in a telephone interview.

“That came out of the wind. It sounds so beautiful. But that sounds like a Schumer deal, or maybe a Pelosi or Shifty Schiff.

“Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.”

Chuck Schumer is the Senate Minority Leader. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House. Schiff is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and prosecuted the case against Trump during his impeachment earlier this year.

So the president was essentially pointing the finger at his three biggest enemies in Congress.

He was also implicitly calling Spera a liar, since she was the one who released Ginsburg’s statement, and said her grandmother had dictated it.

Ginsburg’s death has sparked a tumultuous political battle in the final months of the presidential election.

Under the US judicial system, it is the job of the president to nominate justices for the Supreme Court and the Senate to confirm them.

Trump’s Republican Party controls both the White House and the Senate right now, which means it has a chance to replace Ginsburg, an icon of progressive law, with a conservative.

That would shift the balance of the court to six conservative judges versus just three progressives, and potentially open the door to repeal Roe v Wade, a landmark 1973 decision that effectively legalized abortion in the United States.

There is no rule that prevents a new judge from being nominated or confirmed during an election year. But Democrats still cry badly, citing the behavior of Republicans in 2016, when Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died.

That happened in February, almost nine months before the 2016 election. Then-President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to take Scalia’s place.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell not only voted against Judge Garland, but refused even to hold hearings, much less vote, on the Obama candidate.

“The American people must have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said at the time, justifying his decision.

So, the Democrats consider it quite hypocritical.

“No amount of sophistry could change what McConnell said then, and it applies even more now, so we are much closer to an election,” Schumer argued today in the Senate.

“Leader McConnell put the Senate on hiatus for more than four months while Covid-19 devastated our country. But now he will move earth and sky and ignore all principles and coherence to install a new Supreme Court judge.”

He said Republicans had “mocked” his position in 2016.

“They seem willing to show the world that their word just doesn’t work. It’s enough to make your head explode,” he said.

“And then listening to leader McConnell on the ground trying to defend this – pathetic. Pathetic.

“Why even bother to build a pretext for your position? Why say it’s this or that rule and then do the exact opposite when it suits your interests?

“Why not come to the floor and say: ‘I am going to do what is best for my political party.’ To hell with consistency, to hell with reason, to hell with democracy. Admit it “.

McConnell played down the outrage during his own Senate speech today.

“No Senate has failed to confirm a nominee in the circumstances that we now face,” McConnell said.

“The historical precedent is overwhelming and goes in one direction. If our Democratic colleagues want to say that they are outraged, they can only be outraged by the clear facts of American history.

Their argument is that no candidate has ever been confirmed during an election year in which the White House and Senate have been controlled by different parties. That’s not strictly true, it happened once, when Ronald Reagan was president, but it’s rare.

McConnell also cited the 2018 midterm elections, in which the American people returned control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats, but actually increased the majority of Republicans in the Senate.

“The American people strengthened this majority in the Senate to continue to uphold the impressive judicial nominees of this president, who respect our Constitution and respect the proper role of a judge,” he said.

Ultimately, protests from Democrats won’t matter much here. It’s about the Republicans and whether enough of them will vote against Trump’s nominee to prevent them from being confirmed.

Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate and, in the event of a tie, Vice President Mike Pence gets the deciding vote. Therefore, it would take four Republican rebels to stop the confirmation process.

So far, only two have voiced their opposition: Maine Senator Susan Collins and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

“For weeks, I have said that I would not support filling a potential Supreme Court vacancy so close to the election,” Murkowski said yesterday.

“Unfortunately, what was hypothetical then is now a reality, but my position has not changed.

“I did not support accepting a nomination eight months before the 2016 election to fill the vacancy created by the passing of Justice Scalia.

“Now we are even closer to the 2020 elections, less than two months before, and I think the same standard should apply.”

“For the American people to have faith in their elected officials, we must act fairly and consistently, no matter which political party is in power,” Collins said over the weekend.

“I do not believe that the Senate should vote on the candidate before the election. In fairness to the American people, who will re-elect the president or select a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the president who be elected on November 3. “

All eyes are on Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who was famous for being the only Republican to vote to remove Trump from office during his impeachment trial earlier this year.

But even if Romney joined Collins and Murkowski, it wouldn’t be enough to stop Trump’s nominee. Pence would still have that crucial tiebreaker vote.