Update: Trump said later Monday that he would announce his Supreme Court pick on Friday or Saturday.
Original story below.
President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nomination will likely happen on Monday or Tuesday, the White House said Monday morning.
“It will be a very quick turn of events,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on “CBS This Morning.”
“I think that’s very likely, but I’ll leave that to the president,” she added when asked whether Trump would announce his choice before Wednesday.
Most Republicans have offered support for Trump’s intention to move forward with replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at home from cancer complications on Friday, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who chairs the committee that vets and pushes nominees to the full Senate.
Many Democrats are calling on Trump to hold off on nominating a replacement, or the Senate to refuse to consider the nominee, pointing to how a Republican-controlled Senate in 2016 declined to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee. Two GOP senators also want a delay until after the election.
With the Senate and the presidency controlled by the same party now, a slew of GOP lawmakers say the situation isn’t comparable.
McEnany referred to how a president has 29 times in U.S. history nominated someone in the last year of their term.
“The president will be following that precedent and we believe that voters will be supportive of this move as we move forward and see the quality of the nominee,” she said.
Confronted with criticism from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and other Democrats, McEnany responded that they should look to their own words from 4 years ago.
While Biden opposes a nomination now, he held a different position in 2016.
“I would go forward with the confirmation process, as chairman—even a few months before a presidential election—if the nominee were chosen with the Advice, and not merely the Consent, of the Senate—just as the Constitution requires,” he said at Georgetown University Law School.
“My consistent advice to presidents of both parties—including this president—has been that we should engage fully in the constitutional process of Advice and Consent. And my consistent understanding of the Constitution has been the Senate must do so as well. Period. They have an obligation to do so.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Obama are among the others who don’t want Trump’s nominee to be considered now, but pushed for Obama’s to be considered in 2016.
Trump said over the weekend that his nominee will be a woman.
McEnany reiterated that on Monday and said the president would definitely choose from the two lists of possible candidates he’s released, one years ago and one this month.
The lists contain a dozen women, including Amy Coney Barrett, a judge on the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Barbara Lagoa, a judge on the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit.
