Trump reups calls to put Cruz on Supreme Court in vacancy scenario

President Trump joked Tuesday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) would be his pick for the next Supreme Court vacancy, saying the senator could get unanimously confirmed because lawmakers in both parties would jump at the chance to get rid of him in Congress.

During a midterm rally in Lubbock, Texas, the president praised Cruz as a “brilliant lawyer” before suggesting he had found a way around the often-contentious Supreme Court confirmation process.

“I picked three Supreme Court justices, and it’s very hard to get them approved,” Trump said, referring to his appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “I said, ‘Look, I have an answer to it.’ Ted is a brilliant guy, brilliant lawyer, brilliant all that,” he said.

Trump continued, “Went to law school, top student, everything, top credentials. I said, ‘I have an answer to not being able to get it past the Democrats or the Republicans together.’ I would pick Ted Cruz to be the next Supreme Court justice.”

Trump predicted that in an unusual move, Democrats would “100 percent” support the nomination because “they hate the guy and they want to get rid of him.”

“And the Republicans would 100 percent vote for it because they can’t stand him,” he continued. “They would like to get rid of him. So I’d get 100 percent of the vote, and he would be a Supreme Court justice, and he’d do a great job.”

The president has repeatedly floated Cruz as a potential Supreme Court pick, often using the prospect of his nomination to poke fun at the Texas Republican’s complex relationships with his Senate colleagues.

He made a similar joke earlier this year during a White House event in July promoting Trump Accounts, suggesting Cruz’s departure from the Senate would be one of the few things Democrats and Republicans could agree on.

Cruz, however, has made it clear he has no plans to trade his Senate seat for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court.

At an April event hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Cruz said Trump has spoken to him “seriously” about filling a hypothetical vacancy, but said his priority is policy fights rather than legal battles.

“In the first Trump term, the president spoke to me seriously about all three vacancies, and three times I said no, because I don’t want to be out of the arena of the political battle,” Cruz said during a Wall Street Journal Opinion Live interview.