Daily US Times: Donald Trump mocked Barack Obama During the disastrous first presidential debate in September. He also mocked Joe Biden by extension, for leaving office with so many federal court seats unfilled.
“I’ll have so many judges because President Obama and him left me 128 judges to fill,” the US president said, slightly inflating the 105 vacancies he inherited.
“When you leave office, you don’t leave any judges. That’s like, you just don’t do that … If you left us 128 openings, you can’t be a good president,” Trump said.
But as is often the case with Trump’s attacks, there is much more to the story than that. It is true that President Trump inherited nearly twice as many federal court vacancies as President Obama did in 2009. Democrats blamed this on what they described as an unprecedented obstruction from Republicans after they took control of the Senate in 2015.
Over Trump’s lone term in the White House, he and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, have successfully remade the federal judiciary, and Democrats are anxious to confirm liberal judges once Joe Biden takes office. But some Democrats are already raised their concern that Republicans will once again obstruct judicial nominations if they keep the Senate by winning at least one of the Georgia runoff races next month.
In late November, Dick Durbin raised that concern, predicting Biden would have “very little” impact on the federal judiciary if Republicans maintain control of the chamber. Mr Durbin is seeking to become the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee.
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