Like the best man at a wedding who insists on embarrassing the groom, Donald Trump took some time away from threatening additional air strikes in Syria to offer a few words on the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch. At a sunny swearing-in ceremony in the Rose Garden on Monday, the president made sure to thank Mitch McConnell for ensuring Gorsuch’s nomination, which the Senate Majority Leader did by stonewalling President Barack Obama’s pick, Judge Merrick Garland. “And although he could not be here today, I especially want to express our gratitude to Senator Mitch McConnell for all that he did to make this achievement possible,” Trump said.

“All that he did” remains a sore spot for Democrats, whose nominee Senate Republicans stonewalled for an unprecedented 10 months while McConnell ran out the clock on Obama’s presidency. The Kentucky senator’s rebellion began last February, just an hour after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was confirmed dead, when McConnell declared that Republicans would reject any nominee put forward by Obama, then in his final year in office, and would refuse to confirm a replacement for Scalia until after the 2016 election. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” he said at the time. Senate Republicans then spent months refusing to hold hearings for Garland. When Trump unexpectedly won the presidential election in November, the G.O.P. immediately set about finding a more conservative nominee to occupy the high court’s ninth seat.

Republicans professed outrage when Democrats pointed out that Garland’s nomination had been stolen and pledged to block his confirmation. After a Democratic filibuster last week, Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, triggered the so-called nuclear option, breaking the filibuster and changing the Senate’s rules to allow any Supreme Court nominee to be confirmed by a simple majority. Gorsuch was confirmed the next day by a 54-45 vote.

Trump, whose first 100 days in office have been nothing if not plagued with missteps, leaks, and scandals, has already taken full credit for Gorsuch’s appointment and confirmation. “I got it done in the first 100 days—that’s even nice,” he said in the Rose Garden on Monday, a smiling Gorsuch by his side. “You think that's easy?”