Trump: Biden Should Release His Own List of Potential Supreme Court Nominees

Then-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden (L) speaks to reporters in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 13, 2020. (R), President Donald Trump before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on June 27, 2018. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images; Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden should make public a list of people from which he'd choose a nominee for the Supreme Court if a vacancy arose during a Biden administration, President Donald Trump said late Sept. 9.

Trump announced 20 additions to his own list earlier in the day.

“Joe has to come up now with a list—he should come up with a list, otherwise people can’t vote for him,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity during an interview.

“But the reason he possibly won’t is because he’s going to come up with far radical left judges. I mean, these will be people that are very, very far to the left, that are, you know, revolutionary, in a sense, I think.

“And he’s got to come up with them. I don’t know that they’re going to allow—because they control him totally. They control Joe Biden. He’s not in control of himself. He’s controlled by the radical left.

“He’s not going to be able to name Democrat judges that are in the middle someplace, or normalized.”

The Biden campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s 2016 release of a list from which he said he'd pick a Supreme Court nominee if elected drew support from voters concerned about the makeup of the court.

Biden said over the summer that his campaign was assembling a list of potential nominees.

Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, on Nov. 30, 2018. Standing from left: Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Seated from left to right, bottom row: Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

“We are putting together a list of a group of African American women who are qualified and have the experience to be on the court,” Biden said at a press conference.

“I am not going to release that until we go further down the line in vetting them.”

Little has been said by the candidate or the campaign on the matter since.

Neither Biden nor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), his running mate, addressed Trump’s Supreme Court picks during virtual fundraisers on Sept. 9.

Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer and Harris’s husband, told a virtual fundraiser that Biden would appoint judges “committed to the rule of law” who understand the importance of individual civil rights and liberties.

“And unlike some of this list that just was breaking as we’re getting ready, they’re going to respect precedent like Roe v. Wade,” he said, referring to Trump’s list.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the potential nominees on Trump’s list, said he would like to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion a constitutional right.

Biden’s campaign website says he would appoint Supreme Court justices and federal judges “who look like America, are committed to the rule of law, understand the importance of individual civil rights and civil liberties in a democratic society, and respect foundational precedents like Brown vs. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.”

“Biden has also pledged to appoint the first African American woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, a move which is long overdue,” it says.