Juan Williams: GOP ‘Sold Their Souls’ to Trump to Get Conservative SCOTUS Nominees

Juan Williams had some strong words of condemnation for the right on The Five Wednesday while discussing the departure of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

“I think Republicans sold their souls on Trump, the legitimacy – the justification, if you will – was that ‘we can have a Supreme Court appointment,'” Williams argued. “The guy who deserves all the credit for that is Mitch McConnell, of course, the Senate majority leader, who denied a hearing for just about a year to Merrick Garland, a Democrat. So much for civility and rules of order. He just took it and now you understand what’s at stake.”

“The thing about Justice Kennedy was Justice Kennedy, even though I certainly disagree with him on things like voting rights, guess what? He was seen as an open-minded person who could go either way,” Williams continued. “What we have now is the potential for a Trump nominee who basically locks us into the partisan paralysis we see in Congress on the Supreme Court.”

“Half the country will simply say the Supreme Court is in the hands of conservatives, and I don’t have a fair shot if I go before the court because everything’s going to be decided on a partisan basis, not on the basis of law,” he added.

Greg Gutfeld disagreed strongly, saying that the GOP didn’t sell its soul at all.

“Trump beat the competition,” he said. “When that happened, people had to decide whether they were going to step forth the Republican nominee because anything would be better than Hillary. That’s not selling your souls. That’s making a pragmatic decision.”

“When you talk about civility, you can’t say to a bunch of people you sold your souls. Anyway, I know it’s just a turn of phrase. You probably didn’t mean it,” he added, before saying he’s “enjoying the emotional reaction on the left side of this.”

Williams brought things back around, saying: “I don’t think there’s any question about the party selling its soul, because if you think about a man who defamed John McCain, a man talks about grabbing women roughly––for the evangelicals, I don’t think there was any question that abortion was the issue.”

“They want someone there who will overturn Roe V. Wade,” he explained. “They were willing to overlook all of trump’s flaws and say, well, Hillary would put a lefty up there, right?”

“I think, Greg, there’s a bigger point here which is you need Americans to believe in this court,” Williams argued. “This court does not have an army. There is nobody to make you respect the court. So the idea is that the American people would grant them authentic and sincere leeway to make decisions based on law. If people start to believe that this is just a Trump puppet court, I think it’s bad.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]