The Senate has now confirmed 144 of President Donald J. Trump’s judicial nominees. This despite completely unprecedented opposition by Senators. Trump Victory Chair and potential Congressional candidate former State Representative Perry O. Hooper Jr., R-Montgomery, praised Trump’s picks for the court and said that the President could not have gotten so many of his picks confirmed without the strong leadership shown by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.
“President Trump has made a remarkable 144 judicial appointments since his inauguration allowing him to reshape the courts and their decisions for decade,” Hooper said in a statement. “These have been some of the most conservative appointments since the Regan Administration. These appointments would have not been possible without the leadership and personal commitment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. More than any other accomplishment, including the passage of the GOP’s tax cuts, the remaking of the judiciary is fast becoming the cornerstone of the Republican leader’s legacy. It’s something he’s been working on for a long time. I predict for the next 30 years we’ll be talking about the Trump-McConnell courts and their impact on our judicial system.”
Pres. Trump’s judicial nominees have faced far more opposition in the Senate than any other President in history. According to the Heritage Foundation, of all the judges appointed by Presidents from George Washington to Barack H, Obama 94 percent were confirmed by the Senate without a single “No” vote. 71 percent of Trump’s judicial nominees have received no votes.
“Appointing young conservative constitutionalist judges to the federal bench was perhaps the most important campaign promise Donald Trump made to the American people; and one he has excelled at,” Hooper said.
Hooper commended McConnell for his focus on getting Trump’s judicial nominees confirmed. McConnell even had the Senate working on judicial confirmations during the Democratic Presidential debate.
“While the Democrat Presidential candidates were debating about how to turn this country into a socialist disaster, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was working at breakneck speed leading the Senate in confirming more than a dozen federal judges,” Hooper said.
Trump got a head start on a lot of presidents because McConnell and Senate Republicans held up a number of Obama appointees in the last 18 months of his administration.
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is widely credited with holding Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia’s seat open during Barrack Obama’s last term, so President Trump was able to appoint Neil Gorsuch,” Hooper said. “He was also the driving force behind the confirmation of Justice Brett Cavanaugh despite an unprecedented Democratic smear campaign against the accomplished jurist. But McConnell’s crowning achievement will extend past the Supreme Court.”
“When he took office, President Trump had more than 120 vacancies to fill in the federal courts, including 17 in the U.S. courts of appeals — all of them lifetime appointments,” Hooper explained.. “The Supreme Court hears around 80 cases a year, while the courts of appeals handle tens of thousands of cases annually. This makes them the last word in most cases that impact the lives of Americans. President Trump has been incredibly effective, guided by Senator McConnell tireless efforts, at putting conservative jurist on the appellate courts.”
McConnell blasted Democrats for delaying routine Trump appointments.
“For too long, thoroughly uncontroversial judicial nominees just like these have been held up and delayed by our Democratic colleagues,” McConnell said in a Senate floor speech. “Uncontroversial district judges used to be confirmed promptly in big groups by voice vote. These days, in a kind of protest theater, our colleagues across the aisle usually insist that we hold a cloture vote and then a rollcall confirmation vote on each one.”
48.6 percent of confirmed Trump nominees for Article III courts were voted against by over a quarter of the Senators who voted. Only 2.1 percent of Obama’s nominees and 2.8 percent of George W. Bush’s nominees had that level of opposition. 88.4 percent of Trump’s picks for circuit court have received that level of opposition, while only 12 percent of Bush and Obama’s received that many no votes. McConnell has had to use cloture votes 97 times to confirm Trump’s judicial nominees. The most any of the previous five presidents had for their nominees to this point in their first term was three,
Hooper has expressed interest in running for the open Second Congressional District, where incumbent Martha Roby, R-Montgomery, is not running for a sixth term.
Hooper told the Alabama Political Reporter that he is still interested; but has not yet made a decision on whether or not to run.
Original reporting by Fox News’s Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
