I am not going to try to decipher or repeat Trump’s claims regarding Federal Judges, as, at best, they are confused.
Trump has a long way to go before he can even think of making such claims. Obviously, it is not a difficult proposition to pass all the Presidents from Washington through McKinley, who were in office when the federal judiciary was only a minute fraction of its current size.
But that was then.
There are now 870 Article III federal judgeships and Trump’s 68 appointments are still well short of even 10% of total judgeships.
Trump has two big question marks ahead. Will Republicans control the Senate in 2019. Will he be reelected in 2020. If Republicans lose the Senate, the Trump judicial show will come crashing to a halt. Obviously, Democrats will not confirm any Supreme Court Justices and likely will severely inhibit or even stop altogether the confirmation of Court of Appeals judges. Confirmation of District Judges will likely be done at a slow rate. If they do to Trump what Republicans did to Obama in his last two years, Trump might see only about 20 judicial confirmations in 2 years, likely nearly all District Judges.
Below are the top 17 Presidents in raw appointment numbers.
First number is total Article III appointments, the number in parentheses is the total number of authorized Article III judgeships in the last year of his Presidency.
Eisenhower and Reagan were the last two Presidents to appoint a majority of the federal judiciary, something that likely will never happen again.
(EDIT TO ADD: The forum software is changing my numbering, Lyndon B. Johnson should be 9 and the numbering should end with Ulysses Grant at 21.)
(ANOTHER EDIT TO ADD: I did a little hack to full the forum software, by adding a couple of null lines.)
- Ronald Reagan - 383 (757) 50.59%
- Bill Clinton - 378 (858) 44.06%
- Barack Obama - 329 (870) 37.82%
- George W. Bush - 327 (870) 37.59%
- Jimmy Carter - 262 (672) 38.99%
- Richard Nixon - 235 (521) 45.11%
7T. Franklin D. Roosevelt - 193 (262) 73.66%
7T. George H. W. Bush - 193 (842) 22.92% - null line to fool the forum software
- null line to fool the forum software
- Lyndon B. Johnson - 184 (464) 39.66%
- Dwight D. Eisenhower - 182 (337) 54.01%
- Harry S. Truman - 133 (291) 45.70%
- John F. Kennedy - 126 (407) 30.96%
- Calvin Coolidge - 82 (186) 44.09%
- Theodore Roosevelt - 80 (135) 59.26%
- Woodrow Wilson - 75 (149) 50.34%
- Donald Trump - 68 (870) 7.82%
- Gerald Ford - 65 (521) 12.48%
- Herbert Hoover - 62 (211) 29.38%
- William Howard Taft - 57 (143) 39.86%
- Warren Harding - 52 (171) 30.41%
- Ulysses Grant - 46 (77) 59.74%
The remaining Presidents, from Washington to McKinley appointed from 0 (William Henry Harrison) to 45 (Grover Cleveland).
