FOX "Your World" - Transcript
Interview
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MR. CAVUTO: All right. To Washington right now. Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid calling Judge Sotomayor the whole package, but what does the senator's counterpart think of the Supreme Court nominee? Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just back from meeting the judge, himself. The senator joins me right now.
Senator, good to have you.
SEN. MCCONNELL: Good to be with you, Neil.
MR. CAVUTO: Where do things stand with her? I'm told that Republicans are kind of in this box. They don't want to tick off the Latino vote. Latinos think the world of her, and you're in this political box. What's the deal?
SEN. MCCONNELL: We're in no box at all. All we're saying is this is a judge, as the president pointed out, with extensive experience. She's been on the bench 17 years. She's participated in 3,600 cases. And what Senate Republicans are saying is, we're not going to prejudge this nominee one way or the other. We want to go through the process. This is a very important job. We went through the process with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito just in the last few years. And we've got a lot of cases to read, a lot of meetings to hold, a lot of law journal articles and other writings to review. And I don't think any of my members are prejudging this nomination one way or the other.
MR. CAVUTO: So, Senator, you're one of the guys shepherding this process along. Do comments like those of former Speaker Newt Gingrich help or hurt your cause, all but saying she's racism in reverse? How do you handle that? What do you do?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, look, I am too busy to be policing the speech of everybody in America who may comment on a very important nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to have a lot to say about it. I'm mainly worried with the 40 Republicans who are going to actually be voting on it. And none of them have prejudged this nomination.
As I indicated, we're going to go through the process, learn more about her, and then everybody at the appropriate time can decide whether they think she's a good idea for the Supreme Court or not.
MR. CAVUTO: All right. But as you know, the president, Senator, rejected two very crucial nominees, including the present Supreme Court justice, from the last president, President Bush, so there obviously is precedent for the loyal opposition. Should it then be the loyal oppositions role to vote against a president's Supreme Court pick, especially when, as we learned from the comments of President Obama that were retaken in today's Wall Street Journal, he liked Justice Breyer a great deal?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, about half the Democrats voted for Chief Justice Roberts, a significant percentage of them voted for Justice Alito as well. So they were divided on the question of whether those two judges should be elevated to the Supreme Court.
You know, I don't know where all the Republicans are going to come out on this. Different people may reach different conclusions after reading the record. But it seems to me, in fairness to the nominee, why not look at her record before you make a decision?
MR. CAVUTO: All right. Well, there's an idea. In talking about Justice Roberts, as I meant to say, to paraphrase then-Senator Obama at the time, he said, well, he would agree with him in about 95 percent of the cases that he would handle those as well, it's the 5 percent of the really tough judgment cases that he thought maybe Justice Roberts could not. Is that a fair way to judge a Supreme Court nominee?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, you know, the truth of the matter is every senator can decide for himself or herself how they want to judge a nominee. Some people just look at qualifications. Other people look at philosophy. It's not written down anywhere that there's any particular criteria. I think the one thing that's essential, obviously you want somebody who's very bright, who's got a good background. I think that the nominee certainly meets those criteria. You want them to have a good temperament.
And very, very importantly, and I think this is something we're going to delve into at length, is, can you put your personal judgments, your personal views about issues aside and render justice impartially.
You know, they're all sworn to uphold the law, Neil, for rich and poor. And what that means is a rich person comes into the court and has both the facts and the law on their side, they ought to win. So I was a little distressed by the president saying he was looking for somebody with empathy. I don't know what that means. It strikes me that what you need in a judge is somebody applying the law to the facts and making a judgment, much like Chief Justice Roberts said, much like an umpire. Call the balls and strikes, but you don't get to make the rules.
MR. CAVUTO: Senator, always fun. Thank you very much.
SEN. MCCONNELL: Thank you, Neil.
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