Hillary Clinton calls Senate judicial confirmation process ‘absolutely broken’

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in an interview on Sunday called the Senate judicial confirmation process “absolutely broken,” as Republicans move to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court. 

Clinton told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that the system “has been broken for quite a while,” adding that the Republican effort to fill the vacancy is “another blow to our institutions.”

“What’s happening in our country is incredibly dangerous,” she said. 

{mosads}“Our institutions are being basically undermined by the lust for power – power for personal gain in the case of the president or power for institutional gain in the case of Mitch McConnell – at the cost of ensuring that our institutions withstand whatever the political winds might be,” the former secretary of State continued, referring to the Republican Senate majority leader. 

Clinton said the Republican decision to block the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court Merrick Garland, nine months ahead of the election, should “clearly” apply today.

“They talk about, ‘Well you know we had other standards before,’” she said. “Well they made a new precedent, and that new precedent, which they all defended incredibly passionately, is to wait for the next president whoever that is to make the nomination.”

“But as you clearly heard, that is not what they are intending,” she added.

During Clinton’s 2016 campaign for the presidency, Republican senators prevented Garland’s confirmation ahead of the election, arguing that the voters should decide who is appointed to the court.

The Supreme Court announced Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer Friday night.

President Trump said he expects to nominate a woman to replace Ginsburg, while McConnell has said the nominee will get a vote on the upper chamber’s floor, despite his comments in 2016.