story stateside. president trump s nomination of brent kavanaugh as the next supreme court justice. i want to bring in nbc s peter alexander live at the white house and msnbc s garrett haake on the hill. peter, how is the administration planning to sell this pick? yes, stephanie, good question. we re getting a sense of of it today. kavanaugh making his stops today on capitol hill. he ll visit with the senate s top republican mitch mcconnell. a senior white house official is winding us through this process, telling us that the president made his final decision sunday night. then called ckavanaugh to personally deliver this news. introducing him as one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time. the president is again praising his pick this morning. last night was an incredible evening. brent kavanaugh has gotten rave reviews. rave reviews. actually from both sides. i think it s going to be a
support him again. op on the red state democrat side, the three who voted for gorsuch, none of whom have come out and said they will definitively oppose this pick. although you heard from joe manchin in his statement last night talking about the health care aspect of this. that could be a linchpin to this fight. one other thing for viewers watching this very closely, don t sleep on rand paul. the kentucky republican senator put out a sort of lukewarm statement about kavanaugh last night. kavanaugh s association with the bush white house and the bush white house s wars might be something that causes rand paul problems. i think there s still something to watch here. again, if you re the republicans, you re feeling pretty good about where this starts today. rand paul is certainly someone who likes to stir a bit of a pot. my panel now. he worked with kavanaugh in the white house. jennifer daskel, a law professor at american university. matt welch, editor at large with
reason, the libertarian monthly magazine. and brett stevens, an op-ed columnist with the new york times. peter, i have to go to you first, because you called kavanaugh a spectacular pick. why? well, because i think that he has intellectual and moral integrity. his opinions are outstanding. i ll give donald trump credit, he picked someone who is the antithesis of himself. intellectually and morally outstanding. i knew brett in the white house. he was staff secretary. before that, he worked in the legal counsel s office. he s meticulous. he s calm. he s conservative. he s reliable. everybody who worked with brett had a very, very high opinion of him. so i really do think he s a spectacular pick. i am a fierce critic of donald trump but i m capable of saying when he does something right. i think in this case, he did
elena kagan should be confirmed 100-0. if you have a well-qualified judge in the broad mainstream of the american movement, doesn t have any moral disqualifiers, you should go back to the tradition we had as recently as sandra day o connor. look, a, democrats are going to lose on this issue, and it s going to make them seem extreme and petty. there s a lot of issues there s a lot. immigration is one of them. foreign policy is another. economic policy is a third. a lot of issues where democrats can win election bus they re not going to win it on this one. they re just going to remind conservatives and independent voters that maybe the democrats are too far to the left for their taste and it s actually going to help donald trump in the election. if they make a federal case or if they try to die on this hill, it s going to help them, republicans, in the midterm. if this is such a strong pick, what does this mean for president trump s legacy? this is the thing that
president is really stoked that he said no. a sitting president cannot be investigated. all right, garrett, walk me through kavanaugh s day. he s expected to start meetings with senators? he has two big meetings. first, he ll meet with majority leader mitch mcconnell who s the man who controls the floor who has been so outspoken about the importance of confirming judicial nominees. i expect that to be a meeting meant to show party unity around this pick. he ll also meet with chuck grassley, the chairman of the judiciary committee. that s who will ultimately hold hearings for kavanaugh. peter laid out the time frame. on average about 66 days from confirmation. we would expect to see about two-thirds of the way through that. so we are starting to see today outlines of how democrats plan to oppose this pick, including from chuck schumer this morning,