Mitch McConnell vows Trump’s nominee replacing Ginsburg will get Senate vote

Senator Mitch McConnell on Friday said that the United States Senate will hold a vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee, who is to fill up the vacancy left by the death of justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court.

In a statement issued an hour after her death, the Kentucky senator wrote, “In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”

“By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise,” the statement further said.

“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” McConnell concluded his statement.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, however, said that the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice should wait until after the November 3 elections, news agency AFP reported. “The voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider,” Biden was quoted as saying.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday at the age of 87, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. She was the second woman to serve as justice on the Supreme Court of the US.