President Donald Trump thanked his predecessor for leaving so many federal judge slots open before leaving office, in an Ohio speech Thursday.
“You know when I got in we had over 100 federal judges that weren’t appointed,” the President said, querying “I don’t know why Obama left that, it was like a big beautiful president he left all of us. Why the hell did he leave that?”
“Maybe he got complacent.”
“Now we have about 145 federal district judges, we have 17 court of appeals judges, and we have the one supreme court justice,” Trump said, adding “We were left a present..it was like a gift from heaven…amazing, it was a gift, thank you very much President Obama”
A January 2018 LA Times analysis found that Trump is ranked 6 out of 19 in appointing the highest number of judges in his first year in office. The analysis noted that the President has seen success in appointing the judges because of the Republican congressional majorities in Congress.