NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — On Friday morning, the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore interviewed Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Mr. Mulvaney told a quick story about a conversation with President Trump, where the president asked him if he thought he’d be impeached again. According to Mulvaney, he told Trump “I don’t know, it depends on who controls the House next year.”
From that, I think it’s clear that taking back the House is a high priority for Trump and the Republican Party because they fully expect that Democrats will attempt to impeach him again in his second term. Of course, right? They were talking about impeaching Trump from the beginning of his first term, and they’ve already shown more interest in launching more investigations than working across the aisle to do the business of the American people. But make no mistake about it, the Trump White House expects that if Nancy Pelosi is still speaker of the House in 2021 they will make a second impeachment attempt.
One of the last questions of the interview was about judicial nominations. Stephen Moore specifically asked how involved President Trump is in that process.
“It’s one of his favorite things to do,” Mulvaney explained. According to him, Trump really enjoys working on things that he knows will have a lasting impact, because he only gets to be there for eight years max. This is why Trump has been aggressively nominating young conservative judges, and, with the help of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, getting them confirmed. Together, they’ve managed to put conservative judges in the judiciary at a record pace, successfully changing the balance of various courts, including the infamous 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently gave Trump a significant victory by upholding his administration’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
The significance of this priority of Trump’s cannot be overstated. Barack Obama certainly left his mark on the judiciary but was often criticized by the left for not filling vacancies in the lower courts more aggressively. President Trump has not made the same mistake and his impact on the courts will be felt for generations.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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