Mitch McConnell Says He’d Go After Supreme Court Vacancy In 2020: ‘We’d Fill It’

The Senate majority leader blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination during the Obama administration in 2016, purportedly because it was an election year.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday he would work to fill any Supreme Court vacancy in 2020, an election year, despite his efforts to scuttle Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the bench for that very reason in 2016.

“Uh, we’d fill it,” McConnell said in response to an audience question during an event at the Paducah Chamber of Commerce in Kentucky on Tuesday afternoon. The lawmaker issued a small smile during his answer as guests in the room laughed.

He continued: “The reason I started with the judges ... I mean, if you want to have a long-lasting positive impact on a country, everything else changes.”

McConnell’s office did not immediately reply to HuffPost’s request for clarification of his remarks.

The senator’s comments are notable, given his rhetoric during the final months of former President Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House. McConnell refused to hold any debate on Garland, Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy created by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, saying no one should be considered until after that year’s presidential election.

Filling the vacancy on the court ultimately fell to President Donald Trump, who named Justice Neil Gorsuch to the bench.

McConnell has shifted his story in recent months, saying in an interview with Fox News last October that he didn’t want to “destroy” Garland, but was following “tradition in America.”