4 ms·

Except he appointed a bunch of justices up and down the spectrum and will have influenced this for many years to come..

skissane 6y ago
I think Trump's picks for justices are no different than what some generic Republican President would have picked. In choosing justices, he basically just followed the advice of the conservative legal establishment (Federalist Society, etc). His choices were judicial conservatives, but generic judicial conservatives not Trumpists.
opinion-is-bad 6y ago
It was pretty shortsighted when Democrats removed the filibuster from judicial confirmations in 2014 to try and ram through judges in Obama’s final years.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Democrats removed the filibuster Remember that Mitch McConnell, once he had the majority, stopped processing federal judge nominees from Obama for two years. * https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and-the-senate-helped-trump-set-records-in-appointing-judges/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and... * https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judges-225455 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judge... This also assume that McConnell wouldn't have just done the same. Remember that this is the same fellow that said both "no appointments in an election year" to "we're appointing with less that 30 days until the election". McConnell is a political nihilist: > It was already becoming clear that, in the political world of Mitch McConnell, convictions and campaign pledges were fungible things, easily tossed aside. Throughout his career, as the Republican Party veered right, and then further right, McConnell moved with it. “It’s always been about power, the political game, and it’s never been about the core values that drive political life,” John Yarmuth, Kentucky’s lone Democratic congressman, told Alec MacGillis, author of the 2014 McConnell biography The Cynic. “There has never been anything that interested him other than winning elections.” * https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-man-who-sold-america-880799/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitc... > “Trump is about winning the day, or even the hour. McConnell plays the long game. He’s sensitive to the political realities. His North Star is continuing as Majority Leader—it’s really the only thing for him. He’s patient, sly, and will obfuscate to make less apparent the ways he’s moving toward a goal.” The two men also have different political orientations: “Trump is a populist—he’s not just anti-élitist, he’s anti-institutionalist.” As for McConnell, “no one with a straight face would ever call him a populist—Trump came to drain the swamp, and now he’s working with the biggest swamp creature of them all.” * https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcco... Remember McConnell (and the GOP) were also all about austerity during Obama's terms (when economy could have used economic stimulus). Then, when Trump got in, it was all about tax cuts which caused all sorts of deficit/debt issues—when the economy did not need any help (2017).

I think Trump's picks for justices are no different than what some generic Republican President would have picked. In choosing justices, he basically just followed the advice of the conservative legal establishment (Federalist Society, etc). His choices were judicial conservatives, but generic judicial conservatives not Trumpists.

opinion-is-bad 6y ago

It was pretty shortsighted when Democrats removed the filibuster from judicial confirmations in 2014 to try and ram through judges in Obama’s final years.

throw0101a 6y ago
> Democrats removed the filibuster Remember that Mitch McConnell, once he had the majority, stopped processing federal judge nominees from Obama for two years. * https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and-the-senate-helped-trump-set-records-in-appointing-judges/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and... * https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judges-225455 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judge... This also assume that McConnell wouldn't have just done the same. Remember that this is the same fellow that said both "no appointments in an election year" to "we're appointing with less that 30 days until the election". McConnell is a political nihilist: > It was already becoming clear that, in the political world of Mitch McConnell, convictions and campaign pledges were fungible things, easily tossed aside. Throughout his career, as the Republican Party veered right, and then further right, McConnell moved with it. “It’s always been about power, the political game, and it’s never been about the core values that drive political life,” John Yarmuth, Kentucky’s lone Democratic congressman, told Alec MacGillis, author of the 2014 McConnell biography The Cynic. “There has never been anything that interested him other than winning elections.” * https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-man-who-sold-america-880799/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitc... > “Trump is about winning the day, or even the hour. McConnell plays the long game. He’s sensitive to the political realities. His North Star is continuing as Majority Leader—it’s really the only thing for him. He’s patient, sly, and will obfuscate to make less apparent the ways he’s moving toward a goal.” The two men also have different political orientations: “Trump is a populist—he’s not just anti-élitist, he’s anti-institutionalist.” As for McConnell, “no one with a straight face would ever call him a populist—Trump came to drain the swamp, and now he’s working with the biggest swamp creature of them all.” * https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcco... Remember McConnell (and the GOP) were also all about austerity during Obama's terms (when economy could have used economic stimulus). Then, when Trump got in, it was all about tax cuts which caused all sorts of deficit/debt issues—when the economy did not need any help (2017).