There have been 162 nominations to the Supreme Court, according to U.S. Senate records, over the past 229 years. (The Supreme Court began in 1789.) For Kavanaugh to make such a claim, he would have to have studied not just those confirmations, but the often-secretive selection processes that preceded them. These things, quite simply, are not a matter of public record or even all that well documented by reporters. A week ago, for example, most media outlets were reporting the list of three finalists did not include Thomas Hardiman. By the end, it was believed Kavanaugh's top competitor was Hardiman.
.
.
.
eyond that, there are reasons to doubt it. Trump actually leaned quite heavily on a list of names he did not put together himself but were instead provided by the conservative Federalist Society — a group whose ideological diversity is not exactly vast. Trump did not stray from that list for either this selection or Neil M. Gorsuch's. And Trump spent a relatively brief two-week period making this decision. Barack Obama, by contrast, spent about a month reviewing his options before he nominated Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The claim does fit a pattern with Trump, though, in which those around him feel pressure — whether overt or not — to flatter him in the most glowing and hyperbolic terms possible. The most ridiculous example was the letter Trump's then-personal doctor, Harold Bornstein, wrote during the 2016 campaign, which contended, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Bornstein now says the note was essentially dictated by Trump or even coerced.
