Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared on multiple Sunday morning news shows to discuss Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation — but instead found himself having to explain his blocking of Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination in 2016.
“I think the most important thing the Senate is involved in is the personnel business,” Sen. McConnell told “Fox News Sunday’s” Chris Wallace, agreeing with Wallace that Kavanaugh’s confirmation was his “proudest moment” as a senator.
“We stood up to the mob. We established that the presumption of innocence is still important. I’m proud of my colleagues,” said McConnell.
But things got tense when Wallace insistently asked McConnell if he would block it if President Donald Trump is able to nominate a third Supreme Court justice in 2020 as he seeks a second term in the Oval Office.
Wallace’s question put McConnell on the hot seat because former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Garland during the 2016 presidential election year. Republican McConnell declined to allow Garland to be considered by the Senate, citing a long-standing rule that in such situations nominations be delayed past presidential elections in order to give a new chief executive the opportunity to choose a candidate.
“The Senate is not broken. We didn’t attack Merrick Garland’s background and try to destroy him. We didn’t go on a search-and-destroy mission. We simply followed the tradition in America, which is that … if you have a Senate of a different party than the president, you don’t fill a vacancy created in a presidential year,” said McConnell.
“We stood up to the mob. We established that the presumption of innocence is still important.”
When Wallace said McConnell was avoiding his question, the Kentucky Republican gave him a quick history lesson.
“You have to go back to 1880 to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential election year on the Supreme Court was confirmed by a Senate of a different party than the president,” McConnell added.
McConnell admonished unnamed Democratic members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary whom he said had “leak[ed] Dr. Ford’s name against, apparently, her desires” and subsequently “lowered the standard” relating to a presumption of innocence.
When Wallace accused McConnell of opposing the supplemental FBI investigation for Kavanaugh, McConnell again pushed back.
“No, I didn’t — it was negotiated in my office,” he said, elaborating on the parameters upon which the negotiators agreed.
“We agreed it would go on for a week. And we agreed we would talk to the people that Dr. Ford had mentioned and the people [Deborah] Ramirez had mentioned. And that’s the investigation that was done.”
McConnell was referring to Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexually molesting her during a 1982 high school party in suburban Maryland when they were both teenagers.
Deborah Ramirez accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her during a drunken dorm party in the early 1980s, when both were Yale University freshmen.
Related: 15 Best Lines from Sen. Susan Collins’ Speech About Brett Kavanaugh’s Nomination
Kavanaugh insistently denied all the allegations, and none of the witnesses Ford and Ramirez said would corroborate their claims did so.
McConnell also got into a back and forth on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
As on “Fox News Sunday,” McConnell found himself defending his Garland decision. Host John Dickerson repeatedly challenged McConnell, only to find himself having his history corrected by the Senate majority leader.
McConnell began by explaining that in 1992, with Republican President George H.W. Bush in the White House and a Democrat-controlled Senate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would not fill a Supreme Court vacancy were one to occur before the next presidential inauguration.
McConnell further noted that the current Senate minority leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said 18 months before the end of President George W. Bush’s second term that they, too, would not fill a Supreme Court vacancy if one to occur.
Twice, Dickerson offered challenges to McConnell’s recounting of history, and twice, McConnell corrected him.
“John, you’re completely misconstruing what happened. What I gave you is the history of this. I know the history of this. I’ve spent a lot of time on this throughout my career. What I did was entirely consistent with what the history of the Senate has been in that situation, going back to 1880,” said an uncharacteristically feisty McConnell.
After Dickerson’s second challenge, the 76-year-old Senate majority leader seemed to have had quite enough of the host’s apparent failure to grasp his explanations.
“John, you are not listening to me. The history is exactly as I told you.”
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Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to LifeZette.
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