U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is under fire after turning the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson into a “circus,” as some are noting. The Republican from South Carolina has used the hearing all week to attack one of the most qualified judges to ever be nominated to the nation’s highest court, and to try to get revenge on Democrats for what he considers past wrongs.
Among those supposed wrongs, the treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the Supreme Court despite credible accusations of sexual assault or misconduct by at least three women.
Judd Legum, founder of Popular Information and earlier, ThinkProgress, slammed Graham in a tweet pointing to the video below:
“Lindsey Graham, in an absolutely reprehensible smear, says that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson doesn’t believe distributing child pornography on the internet is a ‘bad thing.’ This is the state of the modern GOP.”
After that exchange, Graham stormed out.
Vox’s Ian Millhiser, a legal expert who has written books on the Supreme Court, comments on Graham’s anger that Democrats blocked several Black conservatives from ascending to the Supreme Court.
“Lindsey Graham is once against suggesting that Democrats are racist because they opposed the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown, who is Black,” Millhiser says. “Democrats opposed Brown because she called the New Deal ‘our socialist revolution’ and because she believes Lochner [v. New York] was correct.”
Here’s another astonishing exchange:
And still another:
MSNBC’s Joy Reid blasted Graham:
More responses to Graham’s attacks: