ANALYSIS: How SCOTUS Drama Is Ultimate Trump Distraction
Trump's pick for Supreme Court is overwhelmingly likely to be confirmed.
— -- It’s President Trump vs. the judicial branch. Trump vs. the legislative branch. Trump vs. his own nominee for the Supreme Court. Trump vs. senators, senators vs. senators, White House vs. media and a jumble of insults and shifting loyalties that’s already become familiar in Donald Trump’s Washington.
For all that noise, though, here’s a stubborn fact: The president’s choice for the high court is overwhelmingly likely to be confirmed. The noise of the last 24 hours –- up to and including the extraordinary statements relayed from Judge Neil Gorsuch -– may actually make him more likely to get the job Trump wants him to get.
Whether by intricate design or utter luck, Machiavellian maneuverings or sheer happenstance, the controversy over the courts is playing out like the kind of distraction the president revels in. On that point, at least, bipartisan consensus is emerging.
“This little back and forth that the news media is consumed with – I think if anything, it helps the case of Neil Gorsuch,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, told ABC’s “Powerhouse Politics” podcast on Thursday, shortly after an hour-long private meeting with Gorsuch. “It makes the case that he’s an independent jurist.”
Said DNC spokesman Zac Petkanas: “This is clearly a meaningless White House orchestrated attempt to help Judge Gorsuch pretend he won’t be a rubber stamp for the Trump Administration.”
To review some highlights, this all began when the president sounded off about District Judge James Robart, who blocked his travel ban from going into effect. Trump called him a “so-called judge," said that a “bad high-school student” would know better, and also warned that “if something happens blame him.”
That appears to have spurred Gorsuch, a federal appeals judge for more than a decade, to tell senators that attacks on the judiciary are both “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” The president disputed accounts of what Gorsuch said, first made public by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, and then confirmed by the nominee's spokesman, choosing then to attack Blumenthal by saying he misled the public about his service in Vietnam.
Other senators backed up accounts of Gorsuch’s take. Yet the White House maintained that Gorsuch was “very clear” that he was not commenting on any specific action –- and press secretary Sean Spicer said the president won’t change his rhetoric about judges.
“Part of the reason the president got elected is because he speaks his mind,” Spicer said.
By Thursday afternoon, Trump was also warring with another senator –- this one, a legitimate Vietnam War hero, in Sen. John McCain –- on an unrelated matter regarding a raid the president authorized in Yemen. And Spicer revealed that a top Trump adviser, Kellyanne Conway, had been “counseled” after telling TV viewers to go out and buy products associated with Ivanka Trump, after the president said his daughter had been treated badly by a retailer.
In other words, it was another dizzying day in the Washington Trump vowed to take by storm. Trump, as always, was at the center of the storm – and not always in a good way. But his biggest objectives remain on track, noise notwithstanding.