donald trump s agenda on capitol hill and obstruct tax reform and infrastructure spending and obstruct his supreme court nomination? if republicans can paint those guys as obstructionists to donald trump is states where trump won by 10, 20, 30 points they will not only not make gains in the senate next year you may find a senate where republicans have a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority. they have to be careful about what they do and start acting rationally. they ll be in a much worse situation in two years if they don t. bill: nominee for a stolen seat. gorsuch nominated to the supreme court. almost a year since senate republicans took an empty supreme court seat hostage. that s the position by which democrats begin this process. marc, thank you for your time. marc thiessen watching all of this.
aircraft was lost. the commander approached the compound the hard way. the only way to judge the mission s success will be the final analysis of the materials that were gathered. the pentagon said that a number of women took part in the fighting. back to you. shannon: jennifer griffin. thank you for the update from the pentagon. bill: let s go inside the committee room. senator orrin hatch is taking questions. just drop in on this real quick. there is no excuse for what they did yesterday and no excuse for them not coming today. we notified them and they just plain a cheap political ploy. they should be ashamed. they should be ashamed. bill: for two days in a row the usually reserved orrin hatch has been rather outspoken. today he calls it a political ploy. yesterday he said he was tired
fill it. just the type of blocking that the public will not stand for. bill: the day judge scalia s death was announced. it was saturday, late morning, early afternoon. mitch mcconnell did not wait. within hours he put out a statement saying the process will not go forward. we will go now with an eight-member court. at that moment did you think that was the right call? no, i did not think it was the right call. i now do believe it was the right call. i was wrong. i thought the republicans would suffer from their unwillingness to permit a vote on judge garland. i also was of the view and still am that judge garland is absolutely qualified and is and was and has been the most conservative nominee to the supreme court by a democrat in 70 years since fdr nominated robert jackson as attorney general. i believe mitch mcconnell did the right thing.
bill: back with you in a moment when we get headlines. four minutes past. shannon. shannon: okay. you saw what happened just moments ago. we want to bring you a little sound if we can get it from senator hatch. senate republicans in the finance committee said we re moving forward. if democrats don t show up and boycott the vote, that s fine. but in the meantime the nominees for hhs and treasury are going to move ahead. senator hatch was asked about it afterwards. we have a little of what he had to say. everybody on the committee was notified. you notice we had every republican here. every republican was sitting in their seats this morning. not one democrat. no, look. i m a very forgiving person. all we have to do is start acting like this is a committee that should act well. it always has in the past. never had anything like this happen in the past. and we ll get together and we ll make things work in the future, but there is no excuse
shannon: we are awaiting the arrival of vice president mike pence and now the supreme court nominee neil gorsuch across the street from us meeting with mitch mcconnell if democrats end of filibustering his nomination senator mcconnell could come under pressure from the white house. it is there to invoke the so-called nuclear option to secure the confirmation. something that mcconnell has signaled he is reluctant to do. we ll see what comes out of that meeting and we ll know, soon. bill. bill: thank you, all the action is on the hill. senate judiciary committee getting ready to vote on the nomination of jeff sessions out of alabama to be the next attorney general. moving a final vote to the full senate. awaiting that.