Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that he won't commit to hearings for a potential Supreme Court nominee if he's the Senate Majority Leader leading up to the 2024 election.
Driving the news: The Senate minority leader told Axios’ Jonathan Swan that he won't "put the cart before the horse," but would expect President Biden to moderate if Republicans retake Congress.
- "What I can tell you for sure, if House and Senate are Republican next year, the president will finally be the moderate he campaigned as," he said.
- McConnell refused to answer whether he was devising an argument against holding a potential hearing on a Supreme Court nominee next year.
The big picture: McConnell in 2016 vowed he wouldn't hold Supreme Court hearings on then-President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, saying Obama made the nomination "in order to politicize it for the purpose of the election."
- The Senate minority leader also said last year that his party would block a Supreme Court nominee in 2024 if Republicans take back the chamber.
- "I don’t think either party ... if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election," McConnell said in June 2021.
- "What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president."
