With the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation vote of Judge Neil Gorsuch fast approaching, many are worried about the terrible precedent the Democratic Party’s filibuster will set. While others worry about nuking the filibuster rules. The politicization of Supreme Court confirmations has been going on for decades, but according to CNN’s Jake Tapper, it’s all the GOP’s fault. “Going back in time to figuring out where this started to descend into the muck, is it fair to say that this was 16-years or so when Republicans really started to obstruct the appointments of justices,” he claimed on Monday’s The Lead.

“Cause we remember—we’re all old enough to remember believe it or not Scalia was confirmed with 98 votes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg with 96,” Tapper continued, “This used to be done in a very different way.”

16-years-ago? There was no Supreme Court nominee to confirm 16-years-ago. Tapper’s claim was as though he picked the number at random. President Bill Clinton’s last nomination was Stephan Breyer in 1994, while President George W. Bush’s first nomination of John Roberts wasn’t until 2005. Breyer was confirmed by a vote of 87 to 9, and Roberts was confirmed by 78 to 22. Both were pretty sizable margins.

It’s a well-known fact that the obstruction and politicization of Supreme Court nominees started much earlier. It started roughly 30-years-ago when Democrats, not Republicans, obstructed and smeared President Ronald Reagan’s nominee, Robert Bork in 1987. But those facts didn’t stop USA Today’s Susan Page from backing Tapper up:

And Clarence Thomas was confirmed of 52 and no filibuster against his confirmation. This has been a long process, a long corrosive erosion of some of the norms that used to govern the business with the Senate. And it’s one more thing that tears apart things that used to be a given. That you would have a Supreme Court nominee, you would have an expectation number one, that they get more support than 51. And also, there would be bipartisanship behind it. That's changed.

CNN’s new politics reporter and Editor at Large, Chris Cillizza lamented about how far the Senate had strayed from what the Founders designed it to. “The Senate was created as a body that was supposed to not be a direct channeling of the people’s will, which is how the Founders saw the House,” he complained, “That is not how the Founders intended it.” There was no mention of how the Constitution was amended so that state legislators no longer selected their Senators.

But Cillizza did place some blame on former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “When Harry Reid changed the rules, this was the inevitable results of it,” he argued.

For all their talk of Republicans being the obstructionists in the Senate for Supreme Court nominations, the facts prove otherwise. Since Bork’s rejection at the hands of a Senate controlled by the Democrats, it has been nominees put forward by Republican presidents who had been confirmed by the slimmest margins. Clarence Thomas was confirmed by 52 votes and Samuel Alito was confirmed by 58 votes. The facts make all the difference.

Transcript below: