Trump to McConnell: 'Mitch, go nuclear'

President Donald Trump endorsed stripping the 60-vote threshold required to confirm Supreme Court nominees, encouraging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “go nuclear.”

Trump highlighted the gridlock that has marked Congress for the past eight-plus years and warned that if Democrats try to obstruct his newly minted Supreme Court nominee, 10th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch, he’ll encourage the so-called “nuclear option.”


“If we end up with that gridlock I would say, ‘If you can, Mitch, go nuclear,’” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “Because that would be an absolute shame if a man of this quality was put up to that neglect. I would say it’s up to Mitch, but I would say, ‘Go for it.’”

Trump announced Gorsuch on Tuesday evening as his nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and repeatedly pat himself on the back Wednesday for his smooth rollout of Gorsuch, a “terrific person” whom he now knows “reasonably well.”

The president signaled his support for changing Senate rules last week during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. Trump told Hannity that he “would” encourage McConnell to kill the 60-vote threshold because Democrats are “obstructionists.”

Eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees would be a significant change for the upper chamber, making it far easier for future presidents to confirm ideologically extreme nominees. McConnell has been a stern protector of the Senate’s arcane rules and procedures, but he and his deputies have indicated that after successfully blocking former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee for nearly a year, they’ll do whatever it takes to push through Trump’s pick.

In an interview Friday with POLITICO, however, McConnell checked the president’s authority, reminding him that while Trump leads the White House, the Senate is McConnell's turf.

“That’s not a presidential decision. That’s a Senate decision,” the Kentucky Republican said of the nuclear option. “What I’ve said to him, and I’ve stated publicly and I’ll say today: We’re going to get this nominee confirmed.”

Trump hailed his nominee during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday morning with Supreme Court groups. Gorsuch, 49, is an alumnus of Columbia, Harvard and Oxford who clerked with two Supreme Court justices and spent time at the Justice Department.

“I don’t know how anybody can oppose him, frankly,” Trump said, expressing incredulity at such a notion. “I don’t know how anybody can oppose him at all.”

Trump asked Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, one of two conservative groups that helped compose a list of 21 potential nominees for the president to choose from, how Democrats could oppose him.

“He’s perfect in almost every way,” Trump said. “Well, they’ll look for the almost, right? They’ll say, 'What’s the almost?'”

Trump recognized his nomination as “one of the most important things I can do as president” and, despite the history of the Senate’s pace, supported “maybe making this a fast process.”

He argued that it would be “very dishonest” for Democrats to oppose a man who was confirmed to the bench with unanimous approval and suggested the minority party allow an “elegant” confirmation process.

“We wanna have him go through an elegant process as opposed to a demeaning process because they’re very demeaning on the other side, and they wanna make you look as bad as possible, and, of course, the press can be very demeaning too, so…,” Trump began. “But I’m sure the press will be very dignified in this case, but I really want — that’s the word. I really think he is a very dignified man. I’d like to see him go through a dignified process. I think he deserves that, and hopefully it will go quickly, and we’ll see what happens.”