First posted on Instagram
President Donald Trump told a midterm rally crowd in Lubbock, Texas, on Tuesday, October 27, that he would pick Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to be the next Supreme Court justice, drawing cheers as he joked that Cruz would sail through confirmation because senators in both parties would vote for him just to get him out of the Senate.
"I would pick Ted Cruz to be the next Supreme Court justice," Trump told the crowd at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center. "The Democrats will 100% vote for it because they hate the guy and they wanna get rid of him. And the Republicans would 100% vote for it because they can't stand him, they would like to get rid of him, so I would get 100% of the vote."
The Lubbock stop was the second of two Texas rallies Trump held on Tuesday in support of Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, after an earlier stop in Corpus Christi, one week before the November 3 midterm elections. The Amarillo Tribune reported about 4,000 people attended the Lubbock rally.
There is no Supreme Court vacancy for Trump to fill. None of the nine justices has announced plans to retire. The oldest, Clarence Thomas, is 77 and was appointed in 1991; the second oldest, Samuel Alito, is 75 and was appointed in 2006. Trump has already appointed three justices, giving the court its current 6-3 conservative majority.
Trump has floated Cruz for the court multiple times before. He considered Cruz as a nominee in 2020 after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before choosing Amy Coney Barrett. At a Washington event to promote $1,000 investment accounts for children, with Cruz sitting near the front of the audience at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Trump called Cruz "a great guy" and "a brilliant legal mind," while again joking that a Cruz nomination would get 100% of the vote because both parties want him out of the Senate.
Cruz has repeatedly said he does not want the job. He has called being considered "a high honor" but said he prefers to stay in politics, where he can more directly influence public policy, and on the Ruthless podcast he put it bluntly: "My answer's not just no, it's hell no."
On paper, Cruz has the resume of a Supreme Court contender. He graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, served as Texas solicitor general from 2003 to 2008, and argued nine cases before the Supreme Court. He has served in the Senate since 2013 and was re-elected in 2024 to a third term running through January 2031.
No formal nomination has been made, and Trump's remarks remain a campaign-trail float, not an announcement.