McCain: Trump Supreme Court Nominees Might Not Be Better

He backtracks on vow to block all Hillary Clinton nominees
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 18, 2016 1:47 AM CDT
McCain: Trump Might Not Be Better for Supreme Court
John McCain speaks on Capitol Hill last month.   (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

John McCain said Monday that the GOP-controlled Senate would block every Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton would put up if she was president, but then walked those comments back. The Senate would be "united against" all Clinton nominees, McCain told Philadelphia's WPHT-AM radio in an interview supporting fellow Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, the Chicago Tribune reports. After Democrats slammed McCain for "promising broken government," a spokeswoman for the senator said he "believes you can only judge people by their record" and Clinton "has a clear record of supporting liberal judicial nominees," the Hill reports.

McCain would "of course, thoroughly examine the record of any Supreme Court nominee put before the Senate and vote for or against that individual based on their qualifications as he has done throughout his career," the spokeswoman said. During the Philadelphia interview, McCain also said he wasn't sure whether Donald Trump would be any better than Clinton at putting forward acceptable nominees for the court, CNN reports. "I don't know, because I hear him saying a lot of different things," McCain said of Trump, who he unendorsed last week. Trump recently released a list of 21 possible nominees. (More John McCain stories.)

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