Forty-three days before the November election, President Donald Trump spoke at a campaign rally just outside of Toledo, Ohio, where a crowd encouraged him to “fill that seat!”
The chant broke out as Trump talked off the cuff to his supporters about filling the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by the passing of longtime Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last Friday.
“As our nation mourns the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I will soon announce a nominee for the United States Supreme Court,” he said, adding, “They say it’s the most important thing a president can do.”
“We will fill that seat… probably announce the person… I don’t want to make the men too angry, it will be a woman,” he said. “It’s somebody that you’re going to have great respect for.”
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CBS News’ White House correspondent Mark Knoller tweeted that the campaign passed out “fill that seat” signs to the crowd.
Trump told them that he’s considering “five incredible people.” Reports are that federal judge Amy Coney Barrett is a frontrunner, and earlier Monday, the president indicated that Michigan federal appeals judge Joan Larsen is also on the shortlist.
Barbara Logoa, a Cuban-American Florida judge, is also said to be a potential candidate.
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Trump supporters at the Ohio rally were, yet again, mostly not wearing masks amid the coronavirus pandemic. “This is a free country. This isn’t China,” one supporter told the Detroit News.
Democrats maintain that a new Supreme Court justice should not be nominated this close to a national election, especially since then-President Barack Obama‘s nomination of federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland in 2016, to fill the vacancy left when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died, was not considered by the GOP-controlled Senate for that very reason.
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Trump and his supporters now maintain that if the Democrats were in power, they would make the same decision.
“This is why we elected him,” one supporter said outside of the rally Monday afternoon. “So, yeah, we absolutely want it done.”
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