With a razor-thin GOP majority in the Senate — 53 seats in the 100-member chamber — President Trump can afford to lose only three votes if he hopes to win confirmation on a Supreme Court nominee (Vice President Mike Pence would vote in the event of a 50-50 tie).
And Trump appears to have already lost two of those 53 votes. So all eyes are now on Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who has clashed with Trump repeatedly.
What does Trump think of Romney?
LOSER! pic.twitter.com/p5imhMJqS1
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2020
And in 2019, Trump said this: “Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him).”
Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous “ass” who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him). He is so bad for R’s!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019
Romney, for his part, has been equally brutal. He called Trump’s alleged appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden “wrong and appalling” and said after Trump commutated the sentence for longtime ally and political confidant Roger Stone that the move amounted to “historic corruption.” Romney was also the only GOP senator to vote to convict the president during his impeachment trial in the Senate (though he voted to convict Trump on only one count).
The former GOP presidential candidate, who got crushed by Barack Obama in 2008, losing the Electoral College vote 332-206, might also find a new report enticing. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a lobbying firm, put out a speculative list of potential Cabinet members should Joe Biden win that includes Romney’s name as a pick to be Secretary of State, KUTV-2 reported.
On Friday, the day Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, there was a report that Romney would reject a vote on her replacement before the Nov. 3 presidential election.
“BREAKING: A high-level Romney insider tells me Mitt Romney has committed to not confirming a Supreme Court nominee until after Inauguration Day 2021,” former Utah politician Jim Dabakis wrote on Twitter.
BREAKING: A high-level Romney insider tells me Mitt Romney has committed to not confirming a Supreme Court nominee until after Inauguration Day 2021. #Mittrevenge #utpol
— Jim Dabakis (@JimDabakis) September 19, 2020
That claim got shot down almost immediately. “This is grossly false. #fakenews,” Liz Johnson, Romney’s communications director, in response to Dabakis’ tweet.
Dear twitter and also @JimDabakis: Unless your name is Mitt Romney or you’re his spokesperson, you do not speak for Mitt Romney. #utpol
— Liz Johnson (@LJ0hnson) September 19, 2020
One Republican senator said, after Ginsburg’s death, that she doesn’t think the Senate should vote on her replacement before the election. “In order for the American people to have in their elected officials, we must act fairly and consistently — no matter which political party is in power,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said in a tweeted statement. “President Trump has the constitutional authority to make a nomination to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, and I would have no objection to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s beginning the process of reviewing his nominee’s credentials.”
But, she added, “Given the proximity of the presidential election … I do not believe that the Senate should vote on the nominee prior to the election. In fairness to the American people, who will either be re-electing the President or selecting a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the President who is elected on November 3.”
My statement on the Supreme Court vacancy: pic.twitter.com/jvYyDN5gG4
— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) September 19, 2020
Before news of Ginsburg’s death emerged, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) declared that she would not vote to confirm a nominee before the election should a vacancy on the high court arise.
“I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. We are 50 some days away from an election,” Murkowski told Alaska Public Media. The senator said she based her view on the same reasoning Republicans used to block the confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court in 2016.
“That was too close to an election, and that the people needed to decide,” Murkowski said, noting that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) repeatedly made the argument. “That the closer you get to an election, that argument becomes even more important.”
But the president appears ready to move swiftly.
“We win an election and those are the consequences,” Trump said in a campaign speech in North Carolina on Saturday, adding that he’d be willing to accept a vote on his nominee during the lame-duck period after the election. “We have a lot of time. We have plenty of time. We’re talking about January 20th.”
Trump also took to Twitter to tell Republicans: “We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!”
.@GOP We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2020