Every president who faces an appointment to the Supreme Court orders his staff to research qualified candidates and deliver that list to him. Trump is the only president who outsourced the research for the list and the only one that promised to pick from that list. He did not reserve the right to send it back if it didn’t include some people that the president believed were worthy.

Trump relied almost exclusively on two outside entities. From The Heritage Society’s own website:

After releasing an initial list of 11 names in May 2016, Trump later added to his list to include Kavanaugh. Trump gave credit to The Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation for helping to inform his thinking in compiling his own list.

Brett Kavanaugh was on the list in 2017:

Michael Wolff writes that there was turmoil behind the scenes. In his new book, Landslide, Wolff writes that Trump bragged about saving the judge from the people on his own staff and Senators who wanted Trump to pull the nomination.

We even get a “sir” story,

 “practically every senator called including Crazy Mitch, and told him to cut him loose, sir, cut him loose.” The quote continues, “I said, ’We can’t do that because it will destroy him — he won’t be able to even go back to the second-highest court, right?’ I went through that thing and fought like hell for Kavanaugh — and I saved his life, and I saved his career.”

Not “destroying a man” (who would not be destroyed. He could go back or get a well-paid position in a firm), was more important than putting someone with better character on the Supreme Court, for life. At least, that’s Trump’s view.

George W. Bush went through the same scenario. Trump refused to do it, though we suspect it had more to do with the fact that Kavanaugh had written a law review article stating that a president couldn’t even face an investigation during a term. Kavanaugh had made the clear years before, but one would guess that piece enticed Trump.

“I went through that thing and fought like hell for Kavanaugh — and I saved his life, and I saved his career. I don’t want anything — one thing has nothing to do with another — but I am very disappointed in him, in his rulings. I can’t even believe what’s happening. I’m very disappointed in Kavanaugh. I just told you something I haven’t told a lot of people. In retrospect, he just hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice.”

Typical Trump. “I didn’t want anything.” “One has nothing to do with the other.” But the guy who knows less about the law and government than perhaps any president in history does know a good decision when he sees one and he’s very disappointed Kavanaugh hasn’t had the “courage” to make the “good decision.”

Kavanaugh continues to represent a real problem on the Court. But there’s almost nothing to be done about it because Trump saved the guy’s life, only to be “disappointed” in his decisions.

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