Sarah Huckabee Sanders rose to the defense of Brett Kavanaugh this week, saying that every Supreme Court nominee deserves a hearing and a vote.
Merrick Garland may want a word with her.
The White House press secretary spoke on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning, saying that Kavanaugh should get an up or down vote despite being roiled by sexual assault allegations. As the Huffington Post pointed out, Sanders declared that every other Supreme Court nominee has gotten a hearing, and Kavanaugh should as well.
“The president wants this process to come to a vote because that’s what’s supposed to happen,” she said. “In every single one of these instances where someone is nominated, they go before, they have a hearing and then the senators vote on it.”
That was not the case with Merrick Garland. The federal circuit court judge was nominated by President Barack Obama to fill the vacancy left by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. At the time, Republicans declared that they would not bring the nomination forward during Obama’s term, saying that the next president should be able to fill the vacancy. Despite there being no precedent for such a decision, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thwarted the nomination and President Donald Trump ended up filling the vacancy.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not the only one who seems to have forgotten about Garland. As CNN noted, McConnell himself has complained that he believes Democrats are trying to sink Kavanaugh’s nomination, even though he engineered the same reaction to Merrick Garland.
There was initially a committee vote scheduled for last week on Brett Kavanaugh, but the process came to a halt after an allegation that he sexually assaulted a girl while both were in high school. Since then, a second woman has come forward to say that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while they were freshmen at Yale.
Twitter seemed to jump on the statement by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, noting that she appeared to be purposely overlooking the fact that Merrick Garland never got so much as a consideration from Senate Republicans.
Unless his name is Merrick Garland I suppose. @PressSec https://t.co/bNb3SiKrxY
— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) September 25, 2018
It is still not clear if Brett Kavanaugh could be confirmed to the Supreme Court. Though he was once considered a lock, the multiple allegations of sexual assault have not cast doubt over the process, even though Mitch McConnell and other Senate Democrats have vowed to bring through his nomination. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear from one of the accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, in an appearance on Thursday.
