Trump vows to act quickly on Supreme Court nomination

President-elect Donald Trump says he will deliver a nominee for the Supreme Court as soon as possible once he takes office.

“I’ll be making the decision on who we will put up for Justice of the United States Supreme Court, a replacement for the great great Justice Scalia,” Trump said Wednesday in his first press conference as President-elect. “That will be probably within two weeks of the 20th.”

Trump said he thinks the American people have been very concerned about the current state of the Supreme Court, saying he feels “it was a very, very big decision as to why I was elected.”

In the third presidential debate last October, Trump made it abundantly clear how he wanted to fill seats in the Supreme Court. “We need a Supreme Court that, in my opinion, is going to uphold the Second Amendment and all amendments,” Trump said.

“The justices that I’m going to appoint will be pro-life,” Trump continued. “They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting the Second Amendment. They are great scholars in all cases, and they’re people of tremendous respect. They will interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted.”

Trump also spoke of his desire to appoint a conservative, pro-gun nominee in a 60 Minutes interview shortly after the election.

“In terms of the whole gun situation, we know the Second Amendment,” he told Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes. “Everybody’s talking about the Second Amendment and they’re trying to dice it up and change it, they’re going to be very pro-Second Amendment.”

According to the New York Times, Democrats are set on putting up a strong fight against Trump’s nominee and are still enraged that Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, was not confirmed last year.