President Donald Trump's announcement of his nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, on Tuesday night was "laid out very well" and proved the new administration "got their act together this time," ex-congressman Pete Hoekstra told Newsmax TV.
In an interview with "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth, the former House Intelligence Committee chairman praised the introduction on live television.
"It's a very, very different narrative… much better than what happened over the weekend," he said, referring to Trump's executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and halting refugees. "This was laid out very well."
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Hoekstra said he believes reaction to the selection is a good sign for Gorsuch.
"I got a number of emails from different groups supporting this nomination," he said. "They got their act together this time."
Hoekstra also praised Gorsuch as a jurist who will favor "real protection of individual rights, individual reflections of what is in the Constitution."
"I assume that eventually he'll find his way onto the court," he said. "And I think as soon as he finds himself on the court, all of a sudden the magnitude of the position that he is in, the importance of each and every vote that he casts on that Supreme Court, the rationale, the reasoning that he goes through will weigh on him."
"I think we all expect that he will be a conservative," but Hoekstra conceded, there may be surprises as well.
"Once they're on the court, they can go on whatever way that they believe the law guides them and there's really no tools to reign them back in or replace them," he said.