joan, take us through some of the names. who are you keeping your eye on. a couple of people, jake. and i ll tell you that not only will i mention some names, i ll tell you that a whole new political campaign has been unleashed. many of these people have friends who are right now trying to get to anybody connected to donald trump or don mcgahn in the white house, president trump s children, leonard leo with the federalist society and here are who appear right now to be the leading contenders. first two are former law clerks to justice kennedy. brett cavanaugh from the d.c. circuit here in town. we also have a ray kethledge and on the sixth circuit, from michigan. we also have a woman by the name of amy barrett, a former notre dame professor on the seventh and circuit. and to circle back to my idea of connections, a man who mitch
you think and when republicans were back in the majority, they lowered the vote threshold to 51 votes for supreme court justices as well. let s bring in phil manningly. do you know if mcconnell is even considering listening to schumer to wait until after the election. i appreciate your chuckle. the short answer is no. he made that statement on the senate floor a short while ago saying there will be a vote in the fall and they expect to have hearings after a selection is made and it is worth noting, the senate majority leader is high on the 25 individuals that are on president trump s list that he said he would pick from. most interesting from the republican side of things in terms of what will happen next, i have one top republican official tell me the full machinery of the republican party is about to kick into high gear. this is obviously an issue of utmost importance for the majority leader and the parry. we re talking millions of dollars in outside money and major pushes on the p
kennedy would retire and president trump sounding surprised that reporters didn t see him enter the white house at any point. but he does say they had a conversation and he tremendous respect for kennedy but also said he asked him who he thought he should replace him with on the court and kennedy made some recommendations but he doesn t disclose who he recommended to him but there is a great deal of excitement in the white house they are going to have floerj chance to nominate someone to the supreme court. and do we have any idea who president trump might be considering as a replacement? reporter: well president trump made big news in the oval office saying he will choose from the list of 25 potential nominees that the white house put out last fall. here is what else he said about that. we have a very excellent list of great talented, highly educated and highly intelligent hopefully tremendous people. i think the list is very outstanding. it will be somebody from that list.
call for an extreme democratic response. it speaks to the polarization on both parties. and so there is not a democratic voter that wants their representative to be luke warm on trump. and so someone like crowley loses in a democratic socialist win and what i think we should be looking towards is the polarization of our electoral issues instead of an immigration debate, we re looking forward to a debate where i.c.e. is eliminated, and donald trump is calling for stormtroopers to go knocking on every door and obamacare repeal versus medicare for all. so this is pretty ugly, but when extreme candidates dominate the politics, this is what we ll get. and the other thing going on with republicans and i don t have to tell you this, supreme court justices get conservatives out to vote. they run on it. absolutely. you don t see democrats doing that. traditionally democrats drk angela could back me up. they don t get out to vote
gorsuch. while president trump replaced one conservative with another when he chose gorsuch to take justice antonin scalia s seat he now has the opportunity to move the court to the right when he replaced kennedy, a centrist. the case is swing. i don t. reporter: kennedy has never liked being the court s swing vote but for years it is his vote that decided a case in a closely divided court. kennedy a ronald reagan appointee was sworn in 1988. i shall honor the constitution. reporter: he sided with his conservative colleagues on issues such as gun control and voting rights. he authored the majority opinion in citizens united striking down election spending limits for corporations. congratulations reporter: and in bush v. gore he cleared the way for george w. bush s presidency but to the dismay of those on the right, he joined the liberals on abortion, affirmative action and the death