‘I’d get 100% of the vote’: Trump jokes Ted Cruz could win unanimous approval for SC berth
WASHINGTON, DC: At a midterm rally in Lubbock, Texas, President Donald Trump joked that if there’s another Supreme Court opening, he’d pick Sen. Ted Cruz for the job. He got a laugh out of the crowd by saying Cruz would sail through confirmation because both parties in Congress would love to see him go.
Trump pitched the idea as a fix for the usual drama around Supreme Court nominations, something he said he knows firsthand, after naming three justices himself. This isn’t the first time Trump has dangled the possibility of Cruz on the high court, either. He’s brought it up before, mostly to rib Cruz about how well-liked (or not) he is among other senators.
Trump says confirmations are ‘very hard’
“I picked three Supreme Court justices, and it’s very hard to get them approved,” Trump said, referring to his appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
🚨 JUST NOW: President Trump reveals he'd nominate TED CRUZ to be the next Supreme Court Justice should one leave the bench during his term in office "The Democrats will 100% vote for it because they HATE the guy and they want to get rid of him. And the Republicans would 100% vote for it because they can't STAND him" 😂 "They would like to get rid of him! So I'd get 100% of the vote, and he would be a Supreme Court justice, and he'd do a GREAT job." I did NOT expect that announcement tonight 😆
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 28, 2026
“I said, ‘Look, I have an answer to it.’ Ted is a brilliant guy, brilliant lawyer, brilliant all that,” he said.
Trump continued, “Went to law school, top student, everything, top credentials. I said, ‘I have an answer to not being able to get it past the Democrats or the Republicans together.’ I would pick Ted Cruz to be the next Supreme Court justice.”
Not the first time Trump has made the joke
Trump said his solution was to pick a nominee neither party would stand in the way of.
Trump predicted that in an unusual move, Democrats would “100 percent” support the nomination because “they hate the guy and they want to get rid of him.”
“And the Republicans would 100 percent vote for it because they can’t stand him,” he continued.
“They would like to get rid of him. So I’d get 100 percent of the vote, and he would be a Supreme Court justice, and he’d do a great job.”
The president has repeatedly floated Cruz as a potential Supreme Court pick, often using the prospect of his nomination to poke fun at the Texas Republican’s complex relationships with his Senate colleagues.
He made a similar joke earlier this year during a White House event in July promoting Trump Accounts, suggesting Cruz’s departure from the Senate would be one of the few things Democrats and Republicans could agree on.
At an April event hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Cruz said Trump has spoken to him “seriously” about filling a hypothetical vacancy, but said his priority is policy fights rather than legal battles.
“In the first Trump term, the president spoke to me seriously about all three vacancies, and three times I said no, because I don’t want to be out of the arena of the political battle,” Cruz said during a Wall Street Journal Opinion Live interview.
