Will Samuel Alito retire? Trump mulls his Supreme Court legacy
Terry Collins- President Donald Trump said in a Fox Business interview he has a list of potential nominees if a Supreme Court vacancy pops up.
- Trump referenced the 2020 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which allowed him to appoint a replacement and make the high court even more conservative.
- The interview touched on the statuses of two of the oldest justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
- Trump suggested he could potentially nominate two or three more justices, if necessary, during his second presidential term.
As the possibility of Justice Samuel Alito retiring looms, President Donald Trump noted in a TV interview how the 2020 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tilted the balance of the Supreme Court in his favor.
Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that he has a list of nominees in mind to potentially replace Alito and maintain the high court's 6-3 conservative majority, without saying any specific names.
During the wide-ranging 35-minute interview that aired April 15, the president was asked about the future of two of the Supreme Court's eldest members: Alito, 76, and Justice Clarence Thomas, who is 77.
Trump says he could make more than one Supreme Court appointment
While Trump said he didn't know if there would be a change on the high court, he mentioned the decision by Ginsburg, the oldest justice at the time, to stay on into her late 80s after numerous bouts with cancer, leaving an opening for Trump to replace her when she passed away in 2020.
"There’s a theory you reach a certain age, and you give up your seat, if you have the president (you support)," Trump said, noting the average justice serves about 40 years. "But she decided that she was going to live forever."
Ginsburg was considered the nation’s preeminent litigator for women’s rights, and the leader of the high court’s liberal bloc, where she served as a bulwark against an increasingly conservative majority before her death in September 2020.
Ginsburg died just weeks before Trump's general election loss to Joe Biden, who at the time said he thought the incoming president should make that decision. However, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the high court just days after Ginsburg's death. Before Coney Barrett, Trump also named Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the high court during his first term in office.
"So you don't know if you are going to put another nomination forward," Bartiromo asked Trump again during their April 15 interview.
While he praised Alito as a "brilliant justice" who is "in very good physical health,"Trump went on to say he could potentially fill more than one vacancy on the Supreme Court during his second term, if necessary.
"In theory, it's two or three, they tell me if you just read the statistics," Trump said. "It could be two, could be three, could be one. I don't know. I'm prepared to do it."