Article by Sandy Fitzgerald in NewsMax
Trump: I'll Announce Supreme Court Nominee Friday or Saturday
President Donald Trump said Monday he plans to name his Supreme Court nominee either Friday or Saturday after the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is laid to rest.
"She was a legend," Trump said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "She represented something different than you or I or somebody else may really agree with or like, frankly, but she was a legend ... I don't want to hurt her reputation at all, but she did vote for me on a case, and it was a very important case, so that was nice. But, no, she was a legendary figure."
Ginsburg's services will likely be on Thursday or Friday, "as I understand it," but in "all due respect, we should wait until the services are over for Justice Ginsburg," said Trump.
Appeals court judges Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa are now emerging as Trump's most likely pics, but there are "actually five I'm looking at," said Trump.
"They're all very smart," he said. "They'd all be great. These are really top people. To get on that list, you know, I created a list, and (Joe) Biden should do that too. He's got all radical left, major radical left players, that's why."
Trump said that no matter who he picks "no matter how great the intellect, how brilliant the people, and they're all brilliant, no matter how incredible the education, they all have incredible education, no matter how good, the Democrats will say this is terrible, this is terrible, no matter what."
He also said he'd "rather not say" who the others in his top pick are, but they're "fantastic people ... these are the finest people in the nation. Young people. Pretty young for the most part."
Judge Lagoa, at 52, is an appeals judge from the 11th circuit from Miami and the daughter of Cuban exiles. Further, Trump needs to win Florida, but he said he wants to "try not to say" that politics would be part of his decision.
"Even if you're not wanting to do that, it becomes a little automatic," said Trump. "A great one from Michigan, you know, you talked that. As you know, Indiana represented very well. We have from all over the country."
He added that he wanted to nominate a younger justice "because they're there for a long time."
"We're looking for somebody who's brilliant, really understands the law and abides by the Constitution, and a good person," said Trump. "We're looking for a good person, a person who's really been somebody that has very, very high moral values."
Meanwhile, he cast doubt on reports that Ginsburg told her granddaughter on her death bed that her dying wish was to have the next president choose her successor.
"I don't know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff, (Chuck) Schumer and (Nancy) Pelosi," he said. "That came out of the wind. Let's see. I mean, maybe she did and maybe she didn't. Look, the bottom line is we won the election. We have an obligation to do what's right and act as quickly as possible."
Trump added that it's a "very big deal" to be able to pick a justice, and now he'll be picking his third. "Some presidents never get to pick any, because, again, they stay there for a long time, you know, 35 years, 40, 45 years," he said. "A lot of presidents don't get to pick Supreme Court justices, and here I am in one term I get to pick three. So that's very important."
The president also said that he believes Garland is "an outstanding judge" with an "outstanding intellect," but Obama did not have a Democrat-controlled Senate that could get him confirmed.
"When you have the Senate, when you have the votes, you can do what you want as long as you have it," said Trump. "Now we have the presidency and we have the senate, and we have every right to do it, and we have plenty of time."
Picking a justice before the election would also be good for Republicans and "for everybody to get it over with because it's always controversial."
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/trump-justice/2020/09/21/id/987892/
