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NeverTrumpers Eat Crow As President Looks To Turn SCOTUS Right For A Generation

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Wednesday’s retirement announcement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy sparked strong reactions from both right and left, but the takes from so-called #NeverTrumpers, or ideological conservatives who opposed President Trump in 2016, ranged from “crickets” to eating some much-deserved crow.

Indeed!

Glenn Beck, noted for mocking Trump in 2016 by dipping his face in a bowl of Cheetos, reiterated his recent jump onto the Trump Train by tweeting that the president “just may become the most important president in my lifetime.”

“Sometimes I love being wrong,” he added.

National Review editor Rich Lowry (yes, the Against Trump National Review) wrote that Trump “may end up being the biggest boon to constitutional fidelity in a generation.”

National Review columnist David French tweeted about the remarkable unity Republicans can muster when judges are on the line.

Lowry and French were not alone in eating crow at National Review …

“There is only one problem: there is no shot – zero shot – that Trump will appoint a conservative [to SCOTUS],” wrote Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro in August 2016, a take the conservative commentator was mercilessly dragged for today.

Shapiro, to his credit, reiterated a conclusion he had reached after President Trump’s Gorsuch appointment:

David Frum, The Atlantic senior editor who once wrote an article entitled, “The Supreme Court Isn’t a Sufficient Reason to Vote for Trump,” retweeted a Donald Trump Jr. post about how “awesome” it would be if Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro got the nod. (RELATED: Here Are The Early Favorites For Kennedy’s Replacement)

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, on the other hand, expressed his wish that “Kennedy hadn’t retired,” because “well, I never!”

Anti-Trump writer and former Bush staffer Peter Wehner called for people to not be “reflexively critical” or supportive and to “guard against confirmation bias,” a take retweeted by Mindy Finn, who ran with Evan McMullin as an Independent to try to spoil Trump’s chances in 2016.

As of this writing, McMullin had not released a comment of his own.

George Will? Well, as of this writing the anti-Trump columnist hadn’t posted a Twitter take on Kennedy’s retirement, but the top tweet of his feed pretty much gave a fair indication of his position:

 

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