These Fox News hosts' old statements about the Supreme Court could come back to haunt Trump

The talk of the US political world is not only “who will fill Justice Ginburg’s place”, but also the brutal hypocrisy of the Republican party on the issue.

After the death of Ruth Bader Gisburg last week, Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell immediately said in a statement on Friday that he intended to quickly hold a vote on whoever president Donald Trump nominates to succeed Ginsburg.

Sound familiar? Or rather, "familiar" only in that it was the opposite of McConnell did when Obama was president.

The announcement sparked calls of outrage over the weekend as Democrats criticised plans to make an appointment less than 50 days to the election, especially after McConnell in 2016 said Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, would not get a hearing after Antonin Scalia died.

McConnell has seemed to have completely forgotten his principles (surprise, surprise) in this case, and so have other lawmakers like Republicans Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham (who once said people should “use his words against him” in 2016 if something like this were to happen in 2020).

Politicians are not the only people likely to go back on their words.

Right-wing Fox News commentators – to some conservatives, and likely including the president himself – are held in higher esteem than lawmakers, and have also said in the past that congress shouldn’t push a supreme court nomination during an election year. Here are a few times this happened on the record:

Dana Perino

Perino was previously the press secretary under George W. Bush and now hosts The Daily Briefing on Fox.

“I think that they're under no obligation,” Perino said at the time, when asked for an argument against moving forward with Garland’s nomination.

Now, she seems to be very interested in who will replace Ginsburg on Trump's watch:

Sean Hannity

Hannity, the host of The Sean Hannity Show and a highly-visible member of the Fox News cohort, backed up mitch McConnell’s decision in 2016:

“You know, it's what goes around, comes around,” Hannity said in March of 2016, according to Media Matters for America. “Why should the Republicans act any different?”

He seemed to change his tune this time around, however, saying on Monday that Democratic leaders are "threatening ... to upend every precedent we have ever had" in reference to the successor of RBG.

Laura Ingraham

Another Fox News favourite also agreed with McConnell’s decision in 2016 was correct, saying at the time (wrongly), “The last 70 years a Supreme Court justice has not been confirmed in the final year of a president's term.”

She seems less concerned now:

Let’s see if these Fox News hosts, and other right wing media-types, continue to rapidly backtrack on these opinions now just as McConnell has done.

Could these 2016 opinions from the Fox News team be a problem for Trump and the Republican controlled-senate? Likely not, as they always seem to do as they please.