Dan Bongino to Senate Republicans on Supreme Court battle: You’re in charge, ‘act like it’
'Move ahead, plow ahead, and I know President Trump and the Senate will do the right thing' he said
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fox News contributor Dan Bongino on Monday called for Republicans who hold the majority in the Senate to "act like" they are in charge and "plow ahead" with filling the Supreme Court vacancy ahead of November's election.
“What are we all being held hostage now? Because the minority on the Senate side that lost the election, they lost. We’re in charge of the Senate, for now. We may not be in January, but, we certainly as hell are now. We won,” Bongino told “Fox & Friends.”
“After you harassed Brett Kavanaugh, they lost four seats and we gained a net of two on the Republican side,” Bongino said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}MARKEY THREATENS TO PACK SUPREME COURT, ABOLISH FILIBUSTER IF TRUMP FILLS SEAT
As President Trump moves to nominate a candidate to fill the seat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday, there are a growing number of Democrats threatening to implement a radical strategy and pack the Supreme Court if they take control of the White House and the Senate.
“If he holds a vote in 2020, we pack the court in 2021,” Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., tweeted Saturday. “It’s that simple.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Mitch McConnell set the precedent. No Supreme Court vacancies filled in an election year. If he violates it, when Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., tweeted.
POTENTIAL SUPREME COURT NOMINEE BARBARA LAGOA COULD HELP TRUMP WIN FLORIDA, STATE REPUBLICANS SAY
The idea of “packing” the court with extra justices -- attempted unsuccessfully by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937 to force through parts of his New Deal that were ruled unconstitutional by the high court -- has bubbled on the fringes of the party for years.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But it began to seep into the mainstream after Republicans refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland -- President Barack Obama’s 2016 pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia -- because it was an election year.
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Bongino said Democrats have been “talking about packing the court for months” and giving “D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“None of this is new, so, what are we supposed to back down now? Here is my advice to the Senate: Forget them, gaffe off their nonsense, we’re in charge, act like it for once. Move ahead, plow ahead, and I know President Trump and the Senate will do the right thing. We’re in charge. We may not be in January, but we are now.”
Fox News' Adam Shaw contributed to this report.