[ Cheers and applause ]
-The day Trump was sworn in...
-I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear...
-...all the top leaders, the new president --
they go to a lunch inside the Capitol.
It's the traditional luncheon
that Congress throws for the new president.
Roy Blunt is sort of the master of ceremonies.
-Lunch will be served.
-When Senator Blunt got up
to go find someone else to talk to,
Mitch McConnell got up from his seat and made a beeline
and went straight to Blunt's seat and sat down.
And for about 15 minutes, he talked 95% of the time
as Trump just listened.
And if you know anything about Mitch McConnell
and anything about Donald Trump,
that is not what usually happens.
McConnell has never said what that conversation was about,
but in a lot of ways,
it's symbolized how McConnell was going to be
the architect of this plan to take over the courts.
-They really did this at a speed at which we hadn't seen before.
From day one, there were a lot of openings,
most notably the seat left by the death of Antonin Scalia.
-When Justice Scalia passed away suddenly last February,
I made a promise to the American people.
-President Trump, working with the Federalist Society
and Leonard Leo, had a long list of names
at the ready to nominate right away.
-Today, I'm keeping another promise to the American people
by nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch.
-McConnell said that day when he was at the White House
and they brought Gorsuch out as the nominee
was the proudest day of his life as a senator,
that that was sort of the culmination
of his decision in early 2016
not to fill the Scalia Supreme Court seat.
-Sitting here, I'm acutely aware of my own imperfections.
But I pledge to each of you and to the American people
that if I am confirmed,
I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant
of the constitution and laws of this great nation.
-The confirmation process then went smoothly.
He even managed to get three or four Democratic votes.
He got him on the court, and at that point,
Trump sort of looked at McConnell
and his White House counsel, Don McGahn,
who was very closely working with McConnell on all of this.
He kind of looked at those two and was like,
"All right, you guys keep doing that."
-Tonight, it is my honor and privilege
to announce that I will nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh
to the United States Supreme Court.
-What was a normal Supreme Court fight that looked like
it was on cruise control for an easy confirmation.
Then came our report in "The Washington Post"
about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
All of a sudden,
you had a Supreme Court justice about-to-be
have this allegation thrown at him.
-Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,
the uproarious laughter between the two.
And they're having fun at my expense.
-If every American who drinks beer
or every American who drank beer in high school
is suddenly presumed guilty of sexual assault,
we'll be an ugly new place in this country.
I never committed sexual assault.
-It was a moment that still reverberates
throughout the Senate more than two years later.
-The nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh of Maryland
to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States is confirmed.
-The days of Justice Sonia Sotomayor
getting 68 votes are just gone.
-The Senate has voted to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor
as our nation's 111th Supreme Court justice.
-It's now just a simple majority vote.
And that means your objective is to get
the most conservative or liberal who can get 51,
because you want to get the most reliably conservative
or reliably liberal justice possible.
And that's what McConnell did with Amy Coney Barrett.
-The conclusion one draws is that the dogma
lives loudly within you.
-I'm being considered for a position on a court of appeals,
and there would be no opportunity
to be a no vote on Roe.
And as I said to the committee, I would faithfully apply
all Supreme Court precedent.
-McGahn, with McConnell's help,
elevated her and gave her a nomination
to the circuit court for the Midwest.
-The clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture.
-She got confirmed to that seat, and then that set her up
to be the nominee when Justice Ginsburg passed away.
There was no intent of trying to get more support,
more Democrats to vote for her.
That day is just gone.
-It's confirmed.
[ Applause ]
-Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are in their 50s.
Barrett is not yet 50.
So they will be there going forward.
They've really solidified
the six-to-three conservative majority,
and so interest groups around the country
are poised to bring new types of challenges,
knowing that there is this solidified
six-to-three conservative majority.
So he has now nominated a total of 220 federal judges
at every level of the courts
and has really prioritized younger
and more conservative judges, understandably.
And so what this means is that long after he leaves office,
these judges will be on courts around the country.
-I take every case case-by-case, and my mind is always open
and I make no prejudgments as to conclusions.
-President Obama made a big effort
to diversify the federal bench.
And I think that's really important for the people
who come to court to see themselves reflected
in who is administering justice in our country.
So he put a premium on nominating women,
people of color.
-Judging is not a robotic or automatic enterprise.
-That changed with President Trump.
And so you do now have more white male conservative judges.
-One of President Trump's judicial nominees
is facing new questions about his qualifications
after he struggled to answer some basic questions
about law during a confirmation hearing.
-Have you ever argued a motion in state court?
-I have not.
-Have you ever argued a motion in federal court?
-No.
-So all across the country,
courts hearing cases about environmental regulations,
gun laws, abortion now are dominated by Republicans
and have many Trump judges.
-These are lifetime appointments,
and they're not beholden to him anymore.
I think he has expected it to mean,
"Oh, these are my judges."
-The United States Supreme Court officially denied a request,
the last-minute request, from Pennsylvania Republicans
to block certification.
-The Supreme Court has rejected the Texas-led effort
to toss out election results in four key states.
-There were limits.
-We look for nine justices to try to right the wrongs
from other places in the process.
When people talk about wanting to have empathy
from their justices,
this is what they're talking about.
They're talking about trying to make the justices
do something that the Congress refuses to do
as it constantly abdicates its responsibility.
-The Senate has basically become a body
that hardly considers legislation.
It is a personnel factory.
There have been a lot of majority leaders
that I've covered over the years.
None have placed nearly as much of emphasis
on federal judicial nominations as McConnell did.
-His legacy is going to last for quite some time
for any number of reasons, not just because
of an insurrection that makes history,
but also because there are three justices on the Supreme Court
and lower courts packed with judges confirmed by the Senate,
led by Mitch McConnell.
So as much as McConnell now is saying
that Trump was to blame for that insurrection
and has not ruled out voting to convict the president,
McConnell got what he wanted.
He got all of those judges through.
-They were able to lock in a conservative majority
that will probably last for quite a few decades.
-McConnell's famous line is, "Leave no vacancy behind."
And he did just that.
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