supreme court when the man he nominated only nine days ago, douglas ginsburg, asked that his name be withdrawn. it was an embarrassing admission of marijuana use that doomed ginsburg. white house officials knew he could never win confirmation. the front-runner to become the new nominee is considered to be judge anthony kennedy of california. with more on the ginsburg withdrawal, white house corresponde correspondent. >> reporter: it all happened quickly for douglas ginsburg, less than 48 hours from the time he first disclosed he had smoked marijua marijuana, he was at the white house calling it quits. >> i today have asked ronald reagan not to forward my nomination to the court. >> late this afternoon, attorney general ed meese, who had pushed hard for the ginsburg nomination, was dodging any blame gl nobody had a candidate. i didn't have one. howard baker didn't have one. this is something where we had a list of candidates presented to the president. together we provided the information to him. and he ultimately made the selection. >> nobody in the white house is blaming anyone for t

the day that the supreme court nominee, douglas ginsburg had to withdraw as a supreme court nomin nominee. as i mentioned before they picked ginsburg for that seat on the court, they had previously thinking of nominating a judge named anthony kennedy instead. by the next day though, after this newscast about ginsburg withdrawing on november 8th, by then we knew that kennedy was back at the white house by sunday that weekend. anthony kennedy was at the white house being subjected by a three-hour long interview by a whole panel of officials including the attorney general and republican leaders in the senate. we know that. we know that kennedy was at the white house being interviewed the day after ginsburg withdrew because of notes filed by reagan's white house counsel which you can get from the ronald reagan's presidential library. the time line was on saturday. ginsburg dropped out. on sunday, three hours interview of judge kennedy at the white house, quote, "the interview focused on personal backgrounds and all conceivable and no holds barred questions were asked." that was on sunday and

, douglas ginsburg was the person that was nominated by reagan. >> right. >> within a matter of days, he was honest about marijuana use. >> and had to stand down. >> and stepped down. a claim of sexual assault. >> right. >> is not sufficient? >> can i tell you the why of it, we will get into this later in the show, this is, you know, the topic people want to know, this is a lifetime potential appointment. mitch mcconnell, essentially at the value voters summit, explained why it doesn't matter what elle or says or maya or paul and what's in his past, whether he lied. it doesn't matter to them and this is why. here's mitch mcconnell. >> the most consequential decision i've made in my career is a decision not to do something, not to fill the vacancy created by the death of justice scalia. the single most consequential thing we can do is these lifetime apartments in a near future, judge kavanaugh will be on the united states supreme court. >> so a, he said the outcome is not in doubt because he's mad at what has turned up about this guy and b, we own the supreme court. only republicans ma

one more point of history, which i think is important here, judge douglas ginsburg, ronald reagan helped push his nomination after bork was borked. he was pulled because he admitted to smoking marijuana. now fast forward to today and we have someone accused of sexual a salt and we're not pulling it. why? >> yes, where are we, anita, where are we? we can't ignore the fact we are in this me too place. we can't ignore the fact that we're now really just spitting distance from the midterm elections. there's so much going on and yet it does have these feeling, i think, of huge importance. tell me if i'm wrong about making a statement about who we are and where we are as a country and are we in a different place than we were with robert bork, in a different place than we were with clarence thomas? >> it's been less than a year since the original harvey weinstein pieces came out and we really had a moment in this country that has continued. it's continued as you see women stepping forward to run for office at every level. as you see unprecedented amounts of small donations going to those women

far less remembered was the time drugs derailed douglas ginsburg.t in college and continued as an assistant professor in college. but this was a bad fit for reagan and ginsburg withdraw. he was seen as a safer pick than ford. the self-described originalist believed that the 1964 civil rights act was unconstitutional. but it was politics that finally did him in. democrats weren't going to reward him and his confirmation failed 42-58. >> at fail came under fire for things like supporting segregation, not to mention a stunning 57 reversal right. one declarewas voted down. there have been other failed and scandalous nominations. just after his confirmation, one fdr appointee was found to have been a member of the kkk. despite the outcry he was not impeached and became an unexpected liberal voice on the court. even killing a man. although the story could have tarnished his name, many saw him as a hero instead. finally, it is stunning to reflect that three members of the supreme court were former confederate soldiers, literally doing violence against the

and so this man, who you see here with reagan, douglas ginsburg, he jumped to the head of the line ande nomination. and then it

rosenstein began his legal career clerking for judge douglas ginsburg of the u.s. court of appeals for the d.c. circuit. soon after, he joined the department of justice through the honors program and began prosecuting public corruption cases. since then, he has served in leadership in both the criminal and tax divisions here in main justice and later for 12 years as the united states attorney for the district of maryland. the senate confirmed him as the 37th deputy attorney general of the united states in april of 2017. it is my pleasure to introduce the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein. >> thank you. thank you. thank you very much. good afternoon. thank you for joining us on constitution day to discuss a topic central to the rule of law in america. i want to say a special thanks to jesse panuchio, our acting social attorney general and his team for putting together superb agenda inviting so many superb speakers. more than a decade lapsed between the adoption of the deck la rax o declaration of independence and constitution. a decade during which our citizen

douglas, 15 days. robert jackson, 25 days. byron white under kennedy, eight days. >> merrick garland, never. >> basically since ginsburg, thoughs been less than 60-plus days. it does seem to be this is the new standard. >> yeah. the "times" said vigorously, to the annoyance of my friend mitch mcconnell, that merrick garland was treated shabbily and that we're going to pay a price for this. i think that was part of the kerosene that's now in this conflagration. >> who is going to be -- it's funny. everybody is so concerned about making sure who gets blamed for ruining this process that no one seems to be like, all right. i'm going to be the one to try to fix this process. it's broken beyond repair. i know harry reid wants to blame mitch mcconnell. mitch mcconnell wants to blame harry reid. this is broken. >> yeah, and senators actually admit that it's broken too. they're concerned about the polarization of the court, and some do say that they regret getting rid of the 60-vote threshold. >> does anybody here believe we'd be in this kind of situation with a 60-vote threshold? george? >> no. >> no. >> so it would be probably fifth