Mitch McConnell swears 'the Senate's not broken'

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is delighted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process is complete. He was less delighted Sunday when Fox News host Chris Wallace suggested the Senate is "broken."

"The Senate's not broken, and we didn't attack Merrick Garland’s background and try to destroy him," McConnell averred. He was referring to his Senate's refusal to hold hearings for former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick in 2016, and drawing a contrast between that and the sexual assault allegations and subsequent investigation brought against Kavanaugh.

"We simply followed the tradition in America, which is that if you have a Senate of a different party than the president, you don’t fill a vacancy created in a presidential year," McConnell continued. "So what we did was follow tradition, but we didn't attack the nominee. We didn't go on a search and destroy mission."

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When asked by NBC's Chuck Todd if he'd like to make this "tradition" a binding rule, McConnell declined. Per Politifact, only four of 25 presidential election cycles in the last century involved an open Supreme Court seat, and in "three of those instances, the Senate confirmed the president’s nominee, and just once — the only election-year court opening in the past 80 years — did the Senate refuse a nominee."

Watch a clip of McConnell's comments below. Bonnie Kristian