WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump urged Majority leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday to change the rules of the Senate if necessary to swiftly push through his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch.
Trump's endorsement of a scenario known on Capitol Hill as the "nuclear option" came the morning after he announced Gorsuch's nomination.
"I would say, if you can, Mitch, go nuclear because that would be an absolute shame if a man of this quality was caught up in the web," Trump said at the White House.
McConnell has not said whether he might invoke the option if minority Democrats block Gorsuch's confirmation, as several already are threatening to do. But the Senate leader has said repeatedly that, one way or another, Gorsuch will be confirmed.
[U.S. SUPREME COURT: More on Gorsuch, current justices, voting relationships]
The nuclear option would mean unilaterally lowering the threshold needed to approve Gorsuch from 60 to 50 votes, so that Republicans could use their 52-vote majority to put him on the court without Democrats' consent.
Speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday around the same time Trump made his views known, McConnell said he expects to see Democrats "giving the new nominee a fair consideration and up-or-down vote just as we did for past presidents of both parties."
What McConnell didn't say was that he refused last year to allow even a hearing for Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Instead, the seat remained empty for 10 months and the court operated with eight justices as McConnell maintained that only the next president should make the nomination.
Democrats remain angry over Garland's treatment. But their divisions were already on display Wednesday even as Gorsuch made the rounds on Capitol Hill accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, earning praise from McConnell and other Senate Republicans.
A handful of Democrats did announce their opposition to Gorsuch, 49, a Denver-based judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals whose conservative legal philosophy is seen as similar to that of Scalia. They argued that the Ivy League-educated son of a former Reagan administration official is outside the mainstream.
"This is a stolen seat being filled by an illegitimate and extreme nominee, and I will do everything in my power to stand up against this assault on the court," said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
Merkley said even before the nominee was announced that he would hold up the nomination and force Republicans to find 60 votes for confirmation, a position that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has endorsed.
But other Democrats were holding off, saying Gorsuch deserved a fair hearing.
"I think that he is owed what Judge Garland never got, which is a full hearing, a chance for the American people over several days to better understand his views on the Constitution and a wide range of the rights that are central to our Republic," said Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Judiciary Committee member.
The committee will aim to begin hearings on Gorsuch in about six weeks, according to a spokeswoman for the panel's Republican chairman, Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
Read Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.