Bill Clinton Reflects on Nominating RBG to SCOTUS, Says Ginsburg ‘Hoped Hillary Would Be Elected’ So She Could Retire

Charlie NashSep 20th, 2020, 3:09 pm
 

Former President Bill Clinton claimed on CBS News’ Face the Nation that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had hoped Hillary Clinton “would be elected” in 2016 so she could retire from the Supreme Court.

During his appearance on Sunday, Clinton said that he found that Ginsburg “had the best combination of skills and instincts of any of the people I interviewed.”

“I reviewed 40 candidates, settled on five, then got down to three. But… Hillary mentioned it to me, she thought I ought to look at her more closely, so I read, first of all, the account of the cases on gender equality she’d prevailed in the Supreme Court as a lawyer,” Clinton recalled. “Before she ever even went on the Court of Appeals, she’d done enough to shape American law for a generation.”

“Then I read her Court of Appeals decisions, and I really was intrigued, so I invited her to the White House to come talk to me. She came on a Sunday night, and we weren’t interrupted,” he continued. “And after she’d been there about ten minutes I just knew that I wanted to appoint her because I wanted somebody who was open minded, passionately committed to equality, and capable of working in the setting of the Supreme Court.”

Clinton went on to say, “I figured of all the people I’ve met, she had the best judgment on when to work with others whenever she could and when to stand up when she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she proved for 27 years that I was right about that. She turned out to be even better than I thought.”

Later on in the interview, host Margaret Brennan said noted that “Ginsburg reportedly told her friends that she had intended to retire under what she expected to be a Hillary Clinton presidency.”

“Did you ever talk to her about that? Do you know who she envisioned taking her place?” Brennan asked.

Clinton replied, “No, I mean… I knew she had hoped Hillary would be elected in 2016 and thought she would and hoped that she’d have some time because she wanted to leave the court while she was still at full steam.”

“And she wanted to leave the court with someone who she thought was not an ideologue, somebody who was too far to the right, but… I don’t think she necessarily had a preferred candidate,” he declared. “I think she trusted Hillary to make a good decision.”

Watch above, via Face the Nation.

Tags: