Politics

Trump Judicial Nominee Has Been Blogging Under A Pen Name For Years

REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

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Kevin Daley Supreme Court correspondent
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John Bush, a prominent Kentucky lawyer President Donald Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, blogged under a pseudonym for almost a decade on a wide range of contentious political topics.

BuzzFeed’s Zoe Tillman reports that Bush has written over 400 posts on a state politics blog called Elephants in the Bluegrass under the name “G. Morris.” His wife Bridget Bush, a political contributor for the Louisville Courier-Journal, appears to be the blog’s primary curator.

One post in particular might make for awkward exchanges during Bush’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In a short report published July 20 during the 2016 Republican National Convention, Bush called Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz a “sore loser” for failing to endorse Trump during his address to the delegates. The Texas senator stopped short of urging voters to back Trump in his remarks, counseling instead that they should follow their conscience when casting ballots. He later endorsed Trump on Sept. 23.

“Cruz’s failure to announce his support for Trump made him look more like a sore loser than a future president,” Bush wrote.

The senator sits on the panel Bush will appear before during the confirmation process.

In a 2008 post, the lawyer wrote that slavery and abortion are “the two greatest tragedies in our country.” In the same post, he argued that Roe v. Wade and Dred Scott v. Sanford — an 1857 Supreme Court decision which found that slaves were not citizens — “relied on similar reasoning.”

Other posts on topics, including the Affordable Care Act, the 2008 election, and the status of enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, will provide committee Democrats with ample fodder to oppose his nomination.

Tillman speculates that Bush adopted his pseudonym from Gouverneur Morris, a founding father on whom he wrote an unpublished book.

Bush stopped blogging altogether during the summer of 2016, perhaps because he was made aware that he would be seriously considered for a judicial appointment should Trump prevail. He disclosed his blogger identity on a standard questionnaire nominees submit to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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