Politics, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

President Trump's Supreme Court Shortlist: 5 Possible Nominees

Folks... we need to come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump is going to be our next president.

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Supreme Court artsyFolks… we need to come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump is going to be our next president. Republicans have decided that voting for a bigoted businessman is more palatable than voting for a hard-right ideologue like Ted Cruz. Independents hate Hillary Clinton too. Millennials are going to vote Trump to troll the rest of us. This is happening, this is how the American experiment ends.

President Trump will eventually abolish the Supreme Court when they hold that he cannot run for a third term. But before that happens, he’ll be in a position to nominate members to the Court that will shift its balance of power. Normal candidates come into office with a shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees who are the legal stars of the party establishment, based on their lifetime of service. Trump is not normal. If you asked Trump what would make for an ideal Article III judge, he’d probably say: “the power, the devastation is very important to me.”

It really wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for Trump to nominate his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry. Judge Barry is a well-regarded Third Circuit judge and would be, you know, way more qualified to sit on the Supreme Court than Trump is to be president. Of course, Trump has emphatically stated that he wouldn’t put his sister on the Court, because again actual qualifications are not important in Trumpland (also… the nepotism).

Without a political track record, it leaves Court watchers to speculate on who Trump would nominate. Luckily, you’re in the right place for rampant speculation. Here’s our best guess at Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist.

Ted Cruz

Understand, ideologues who are good debaters that have trouble making friends usually end up as judges anyway. Ted Cruz was the solicitor general for Texas, and if he had stayed in that job he surely would have been a top choice to become the U.S. Solicitor General if the Republicans ever took back the White House. Cruz decided to get into politics even though nobody likes him and his chin and neck appear to exist at the same depth. But in an alternate timeline, Ted Cruz is just waiting around for Antonin Scalia to die during a Republican administration.

Trump and Ted are fighting now, but one of the benefits of electing a goldfish for President is that you wouldn’t expect him to hold a grudge. If Ted Cruz can’t be president, he wants to be on the Supreme Court. And I’m sure somebody can summarize Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals into a fortune cookie so the Donald can understand it.

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Roy Moore

Roy Moore is the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In his position, he has refused to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments from his courthouse, and recently ordered state probate judges to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage. But what will really appeal to Trump are his comments that the First Amendment only protects Christians.

That kind of selective application of rights based on a person’s religion is exactly the kind of thing that has made Trump so popular among Republican voters. I’m sure President Trump is eager to tell us which constitutional protections apply to which people: Only Christians get the First Amendment, only white people get the Second Amendment, but minorities can totally have the Third Amendment because soldiers should obviously stay at the “classy,” “beautiful” Trump Tower whenever they are in town.

Roy Moore is the kind of guy who won’t have a problem with that.

Edward Blum

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If you wonder why the Supreme Court always seems to be hearing the right case it needs to destroy an entire liberal public policy, you have Edward Blum to thank. As a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Blum excels at picking the right test cases to throw at the Supreme Court. Blum doesn’t have any formal legal training, but that’s not constitutionally required of SCOTUS nominees — and knowing how to use the Court to advance your policy position is, you know, a skill. Progressives had Thurgood Marshall, conservatives have… this guy.

Blum calls himself a “matchmaker” between plaintiffs and lawyers. Trump calls himself a dealmaker. Together, I’m sure they’ll get us a good price for overturning our precedents.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck

The right answer here is Megyn Kelly. Kelly is a popular conservative with a law degree who would be a true outsider on a Court that probably needs one. There is a legitimate argument that the Supreme Court needs to be shaken up with somebody from outside of the judicial mainstream. We can expect that Donald Trump agrees with that argument, and Megyn Kelly is probably as outside the box you can get while still being confirmable.

Unfortunately, Donald and Kelly have an irreparable feud stemming from Kelly’s insistence on talking aloud while having a vagina. She can be a real “b-word,” with the way she uses that gooey stuff under her hairdo and her mouthparts to give voice to thought. Donald doesn’t like women who utilize sentence structure; he prefers them to sound like this.

But here’s the thing: I’ll bet all the money in my pocket that Donald Trump cannot tell the intellectual difference between the blonde television stars he has met. Every time Kelly talks, he’s probably thinking “I could have sworn I fired Carolyn Kepcher ten years ago.” If you tell him, “You should really nominate Megyn Kelly.” He’ll say, “No, she’s not very nice to me,” and then his brain will go for the next person who matches Kelly’s “talents” he can think of.

And that next person will be Elisabeth Hasselbeck — who is what you’d get if you took Megyn Kelly and replaced her brain with chemtrails.

Shaquille O’Neal

When bigots like Donald Trump are told that they must hire a black person, they don’t go out and find the most talented black person to fill the position. Instead they go out and find a black person who is totally overmatched to complete the cycle of self-fulfilling bias. You watch. Idris Elba will not win an Oscar next year, but Marlon Wayans will get nominated for 50 Shades of Black.

When Thurgood Marshall retired, George H.W. Bush nominated a mute who was accused of sexual harassment. Bush just wanted an African-American fellow who would read from the conservative talking points card, and in Clarence Thomas he got somebody way more conservative than he could have possibly pushed through if he had nominated a white guy. Bush’s other SCOTUS nominee was David Souter, for Christ’s sake.

Should Clarence Thomas die on President Trump’s watch, and there is a groundswell for Trump to nominate another black person to “Thurgood Marshall’s spot,” expect Shaquille O’Neal to get a serious look. Don’t sleep on the Big Jurisprudence. Shaq might not have a law degree, but he is a cop, and has a well-documented affinity for law enforcement. He’s got the kind of immense celebrity that Trump is attracted to. And since Shaq is functionally unintelligible, his mumblings from the bench will be in keeping with Clarence Thomas’s abject silence.

Most importantly, Shaq is obsessed with his own popularity as much as Trump is obsessed with his own polls. Shaq wants to be liked more than a teenager at Hot Topic. He will absolutely be a friend to the populist hysteria that carries Trump to office. He’d make a great judge if what you want is for the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp duly passed acts of Congress unless popular opinion overwhelming opposed those laws. Guess what: that’s exactly what Donald Trump will want his Supreme Court to do.

Other potential nominees will surely emerge as we get closer to Trump’s coronation. If the above shortlist worries you, it might be time to ask yourself what side of Trump’s Rio Humongous Wall you really want to be on?

Earlier: A Delicious Judicial Diva: Donald Trump’s Older Sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry
Leave. Donald Trump’s Sister. Alone!

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