Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that he did not believe that President Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court was “inappropriate.”
“I heard a couple of people say they thought it was inappropriate for the president to announce he was going to put an African American woman on the court. Honestly, I did not think that was inappropriate,” the Kentucky Republican said during a Lexington Commerce event in Kentucky.
“President Reagan promised to put a woman on the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor. President Trump promised to put a woman on the Supreme Court when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, so I’m not complaining about that.”
But McConnell vowed that the president’s nominee to the high court would be treated better than Brett Kavanaugh was during his Supreme Court nomination process, which was mired by sexual misconduct allegations from several women. Kavanaugh, however, has denied the allegations made against him.
“I think one thing I can promise you, for sure, if you remember the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, that this confirmation will not occur like that. I think we believe the Supreme Court nominee ought to be respectfully treated, thoroughly vetted and then voted upon,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s remarks come as several Republican senators criticized the president following his announcement that he intended to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said late last month during ABC’s “This Week” that she would “welcome the appointment of a Black female to the court” but said that because he had made this pledge as a candidate, “that helped politicize the entire nomination process.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it “offensive.”
“The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I gotta say that’s offensive. You know, you know Black women are what, 6 percent of the U.S. population? He’s saying to 94 percent of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible,’” Cruz said on an episode of his podcast, “Verdict.”
However, some Republicans have pushed back against the criticism of Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) argued that the move to nominate a Black female to the court was not affirmative action.
“Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America. You know, we make a real effort as Republicans to recruit women and people of color to make the party look more like America,” Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” late last month.