President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively in a lengthy Oval Office interview on Tuesday evening that he is prepared for the possibility that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito may retire, but that “nobody” can replace him truly since Alito is “one of the greatest of all time.”
Trump sat with Breitbart News for a nearly hourlong interview in the Oval Office on Tuesday night, and said he saw the fake report from NPR’s Nina Totenberg that Alito had announced his retirement on the final day of Supreme Court opinions earlier that morning. NPR retracted Totenberg’s story, and the longtime legal correspondent issued a huge apology publicly and to Justice Alito before Breitbart News sat down with Trump at the White House.
While Totenberg’s story that Alito had announced his retirement on Tuesday was untrue, it’s still a possibility that he might retire this summer before the midterm elections in the United States. The 76-year-old conservative stalwart is one of three looming possible Supreme Court vacancies. His 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,” Trump told Breitbart News. “There are a lot of great people out there who would like to have that position.”
Trump asked Breitbart News if Totenberg’s story turned “out to be totally fake news,” and Breitbart News informed him that yes, it was, and that she retracted it and apologized.
But the president said he had heard about the report earlier in the day, and was torn on whether it would be good for the country for Alito to retire.
“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.”
Trump said that while the thought of putting “a young conservative judge on the bench for 40 years” is a “very important thing,” at the same time Alito will “go down as one of the greatest of all time.”
“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,” Trump said. “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 told Breitbart News regarding Thomas, about whom there have been no retirement rumors, “Clarence has been a superstar too.” Since both are such stalwarts, he argued, any discussions of replacing either due to a vacancy was a “mixed blessing.”
“They have been unbelievable, and you know, so you’re–it’s like a mixed blessing, really,” Trump said.
More from President Trump’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.
Read the full article here