In their Oval Office session, McConnell had come prepared with a plan to align his interests with the president’s. He pitched Trump on a bold idea: if they focused on it, McConnell said, they could transform the federal judiciary. He ran through all the progress that he and Don McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel, had been making already on this by pushing federal judicial nominations through with factory-like efficiency. If Trump made this a priority, he could make history, McConnell suggested, and lock down his conservative base as well. In the midst of McConnell’s explanation, Sarah
...more
