Speaking to a conservative radio show host Monday, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said President Joe Biden would most likely not get a Supreme Court pick confirmed in 2024 if Republicans take over the Senate in 2022.
“I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election,” Senator McConnell said.
While no one has announced plans to step down, there have been calls from the left for 82-year-old Justice Stephen G. Breyer to retire before the 2022 midterms, so Democrats can appoint a successor while they still control the Senate and the presidency.
In 2016, McConnell and the then-majority Republican Senate blocked then-Democratic President Barack Obama’s pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died just under nine months before Election Day.
Former President Donald Trump ended up filling the seat, appointing Justice Neil Gorsuch the next year.
In 2020, the same majority Republican Senate helped former President Trump appoint Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Some have called Justice Barrett’s appointment hypocritical on McConnell’s part, given the blocking of now-Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2016.
“What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president,” McConnell told said. “And that’s why we went ahead with it.”
McConnell went onto say Supreme Court vacancies have not been filled during an election year by a Senate of the opposite party of the president since the 1880s.
