In a speech in Philadelphia on Sunday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden claimed that the Trump campaign only began demanding he release a list of potential Supreme Court nominees after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday.
“They’re now saying, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, they said, ‘Biden should release his list [of potential Supreme Court nominees],’” said Biden. “It’s no wonder the Trump campaign asked that I release the list only after she passed away. It’s a game for them. It’s a play to gin up emotions and anger.”
While it is true that the Trump campaign has requested such a list in the wake of Ginsburg’s passing, Biden is incorrect to claim that such requests began after her death. During an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network on June 22 of this year, President Trump said: “You ought to ask a guy like a Biden or ask his campaign, give a list of judges, see where they stand on pro-life, see where they stand on it. You will not be able to get that list, because they’re going to put an absolute radical lefty in there in the Supreme Court.”
During a speech at the RNC on August 24, Trump reiterated his request that Biden release a list of potential Supreme Court picks, saying: “I’m demanding actually, a list. Let Biden put up a list of the judges he’s going to appoint. That he’ll take them out, like I did. I had 25 and we’re going to take it out of that list. And we’re going to be announcing a list over the next couple of weeks with the judges that we had, plus we might add a few more. So you know exactly where we stand. He can’t do it, because he would appoint. … It’s not him. He has no choice. The radical left will demand that he appoints super radical, left, wild, crazy justices.”
On September 9, Trump announced further additions to his list of potential nominees and said that “[Biden] must release a list of justices for people to properly make a decision as to how they will vote. It is very important that he do so.”
On September 17, the day before Ginsburg passed away, the Trump campaign reiterated the request for a list of Biden nominees, asking in a statement: “So where is Biden’s list of potential nominees?”
Others prominent Republicans have also requested Biden release a list. A few days after Trump’s September 9 comments, for example, Sen. Chuck Grassley, president pro tempore of the Senate, issued a statement reading: “I call on Vice President Biden to release the list of names from which he would nominate to the Supreme Court, no later than September 30.”
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