Supporters of Donald Trump hit on a new chant at a campaign rally in North Carolina at the weekend.
In 2016, it was “Lock her up! Lock her up!”
In 2020, it’s “Fill that seat! Fill that seat!”
The “seat”, of course, refers to the supreme court vacancy created with the death on Friday of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal justice whose replacement with a conservative by Trump could remake American life under the law for generations.
For the aggressively informal air of a typical Trump event, a supreme court-themed chant might not seem like an obvious crowd-shaking rallying cry. But Trump’s success at appointing conservative judges is not only a political winner for Trump: it amounts to a true and towering legacy.
“I’m going to be up to 280 judges very soon,” Trump bragged to the journalist Bob Woodward in remarks that Woodward captured on tape and released Sunday. “Nobody’s ever had that. Two hundred and eighty. You know? Nobody’s ever had that.”
Trump’s number was characteristically inflated: the number of judges he has placed on district- and circuit-court benches and the supreme court totals 214 (out of 865 total); a Ginsburg replacement would make 215.
But Trump was exactly right that “nobody’s ever had that” many appointees to the bench so quickly – meaning that no president has done more to shape the future of American life under the law on issues from discrimination claims to marriage equality to gun control.
Trump is trying to boost Republican turnout in the election by communicating that the fate of the landmark Roe v Wade supreme court ruling protecting abortion rights is on the line, said Nan Aron, president of the progressive Alliance for Justice advocacy group.
“Republicans have long seized on the judiciary as a reliable tool to galvanize their base before an election,” Aron said. “It strikes me at this point it’s a desperate measure on the part of this administration, to appeal to their voters to actually go to the polls.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
