Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, cautioned against the Republican-led Senate in a new interview, criticizing how the chamber is "being so compliant" to whatever President Donald Trump wants.
Reid sat down with Vox for a lengthy interview in which he railed on Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
"I can't imagine how the Republicans are being so compliant on everything [Trump] wants," Reid said. "What's the Senate all about?"
Reid, 79, retired from the Senate in 2015. He was highly criticized by the right for enacting the nuclear option in 2013 to prevent Republican filibusters as he tried to get former President Barack Obama's judicial and executive branch nominees approved. He said doing that was his only option in the face of Republican pushback.
"It was the right thing to do," he said.
Regarding Trump, Reid seemed disappointed in how the Republican Party, or at least Republican lawmakers, have become the party of Trump.
"Trump did not create the Republican Congress; the Republican Congress created Trump," Reid said.
Reid also had harsh things to say about how the GOP Senate has handled the Supreme Court. Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the court in 2016, but McConnell refused to take up the nomination because it was an election year. Garland's nomination eventually expired, and Trump has since nominated — and the Senate approved — two associated justices to serve on the nine-member court.
"The chairman of the Republican Judiciary Committee when they were in the majority, [Orrin] Hatch from Utah, said the most qualified person to be a Supreme Court Justice is Merrick Garland. He said that. . . . And so when Merrick Garland came up . . . we were all very happy, but Orrin Hatch walked away from it and this man never even got a vote.
"So, that's what the Republicans have caused to happen in the Senate. If they have a black mark against them, it is certainly what they've done with the Supreme Court."
He later added, "As I always said, I didn't work for the president, I worked with him. We are a separate branch of government — we're the legislative branch of government. Let the White House, which is the executive branch of government, do what they want to do. But we should be a buttress to keep the White House from going crazy, as this one has done. . . . I think the Senate has lost their way."
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