The Bachelor-in-Chief Gave A Rose To Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch

Ken Tucker
·Critic-at-Large, Yahoo Entertainment

All day Tuesday, cable news had been breathless in its coverage of which attractive judicial candidate would receive a rose from President Trump in a prime-time ceremony. Would it be Thomas Hardiman of the Third Circuit in Pennsylvania, or Neil Gorsuch of the 10th Circuit in Colorado? On Tuesday night, with the President serving as The Bachelor-In-Chief, the lucky contestant was asked by Trump to “step forward”: It was Gorsuch, a tall drink of water who managed not to blush.

Trump said that Gorsuch doesn’t merely like the Constitution, he “looooves the Constitution.” Once Gorsuch was congratulated, the President spread his arms and demanded appreciation from the assembled audience. “So was that a surprise?” he asked. “Was it?” Applause rang out in the White House, and the 15-minute show — shockingly short for a Trump TV appearance — was over. All the networks — broadcast and cable — covered the event; NBC won the prize for being the first to get back to business: paying bills with an episode of The Wall.

It was left to cable to pick away at the nomination. As you may know, I am allergic to the skin-prickling sonorousness of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, so I checked out Fox and MSNBC. On Fox, Bill O’Reilly looked only mildly enraged that the Supreme Court had preempted a chunk of The O’Reilly Factor. His analysis? That the “bomb-thrower” Democrats will say that Gorsuch “is a misogynist, he doesn’t like gay people.” He thinks Gorsuch will be subject to a “smear campaign” by the Democrats. Not by Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer, said Bill: “They’ll farm it out to their vicious hit-groups, George Soros-funded, many of them.” O’Reilly has already exceeded my limit for Soros mentions for the week (and it’s only Tuesday!), so I switched over to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, where Slate’s judicial analyst Dahlia Lithwick said that this was Trump’s “least radical” pick thus far: “He’s not a bomb-thrower” — same phrase O’Reilly used; what are the odds? — “he’s an incredibly solid choice.” And I think Lithwick truly meant that use of “incredible,” as in, it’s almost not credible that Trump didn’t pick someone who wants to explode the Supreme Court, in the bomb-throwing (hey, it’s catchy!) style of the Shadow President, Steve Bannon. All in all, it was the best Bachelor episode I’ve seen, if only for its brevity.