In light of Tuesday’s Supreme Court’s decision upholding President Donald Trump’s travel ban, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) says he regrets how Democrats in 2016 handled Republican’s blocking former President Barack Obama’s nominee to the high court.
“We should have shut down the Senate,” Schatz told reporters when asked if his party could have done anything more to push through Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, who was nominated 8 months before the 2016 presidential election.
According to Schatz, Democrats were so sure that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election that they figured Garland would be eventually confirmed without battling Republicans in the Senate — a move the Hawaii senator now says was a mistake.
“Here’s what happened, we made a calculation that we were going to win the election and confirm a nominee and it didn’t work out,” Schatz said. Schatz also took to Twitter and called out the Supreme Court for ignoring “evidence that the Muslim ban, even the more narrowly tailored version, is a xenophobic policy.”
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SCOTUS made the wrong decision and ignored the evidence that the Muslim ban, even the more narrowly tailored version, is a xenophobic policy that makes our country no safer than before. The American people know the truth about the Muslim ban: it is un-American.”— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) 26 June 2018
However, Schatz’s Democratic colleague in the Senate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), disagreed that shutting down the Senate would’ve been a better response to Republicans blocking Garland.
