President Donald Trump is ready for a potential Supreme Court opening — but he made clear Justice Samuel Alito stands in a league of his own.
Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive Oval Office interview Tuesday evening that while he’s prepared for the possibility Alito may retire, “nobody” can truly replace him because Alito is “one of the greatest of all time.”
The nearly hour-long sit-down came hours after NPR’s Nina Totenberg falsely reported Alito had announced his retirement on the final day of Supreme Court opinions Tuesday morning. NPR retracted the story, and Totenberg issued a public apology to both readers and Justice Alito before the interview.
While Totenberg’s report was fake news, the possibility of an Alito retirement this summer remains real.
The 76-year-old conservative stalwart is one of three looming potential Supreme Court vacancies. Fellow hardcore conservative Clarence Thomas just turned 78, and liberal Sonia Sotomayor — who is 72 — has been reported to have major health issues recently.
“Well I think you know, if you listen to people, there are three potential vacancies for various reasons, so I’m certainly prepared. There are a lot of great people out there who would like to have that position.”
Trump confirmed he’d heard about Totenberg’s bogus report earlier in the day and was torn on whether an Alito retirement would ultimately be good for the country.
“I actually heard that, and you have to understand you’re asking the wrong guy because I’m his single biggest fan,” Trump said. “He’s fantastic. He’s one of the most incredible people that I’ve ever met. He’s brilliant. He’s so solid and so respected.”
The president acknowledged that putting “a young conservative judge on the bench for 40 years” is a “very important thing.”
But Alito will “go down as one of the greatest of all time,” Trump said.
“So I was in one way privileged to be able to pick somebody that would be—I’d love to pick a younger version of him, but there is no younger version of him. There’s nobody that is going to be able to do what he does and do it so well. So in one way I was happy, in one way it was actually sad.”
Trump also praised Justice Clarence Thomas — about whom there have been no retirement rumors — calling him a “superstar.”
Any vacancy involving either conservative giant would be a “mixed blessing,” Trump said, given their towering legacies.
“They have been unbelievable, and you know, so you’re–it’s like a mixed blessing, really,” Trump said.
Breitbart News will release more from the exclusive Trump interview in the coming days.
