McConnell: Vacant Supreme Court seat won the election for Trump

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the vacant seat on the Supreme Court won the election for Donald Trump. “At the end, this issue more than any other, elected Donald Trump, because, at the end, you had two candidates who were overwhelmingly unpopular,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday that President Trump might not have defeated Hillary Clinton in November had the Supreme Court not been a major issue in the 2016 campaign.

In hindsight, the Kentucky Republican said, his decision to block former President Barack Obama from appointing a successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia was probably the decisive factor in Trump’s victory, given GOP voters’ strong reservations about him.

McConnell spoke to the Washington Examiner just after Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to fill a vacant seat on the high court.

“At the end, this issue more than any other, elected Donald Trump, because, at the end, you had two candidates who were overwhelmingly unpopular,” McConnell said. “Nobody was predicting Trump would get 90 percent of the Republican vote just like Mitt Romney did [in 2012,] but he did. And the single biggest reason was, they wanted him to make the Supreme Court appointment, not Hillary Clinton.”

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