Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway on Thursday attempted to recast the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson as a “respectful” affair in which senators asked the Biden Supreme Court nominee questions in a “proper” and “appropriate” manner.
“Everything was respectful in this confirmation hearing,” Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “That’s good. A judge’s judicial philosophy should be analyzed. Everyone did it in a proper and appropriate way and nobody made up lies about her, so that is more than enough.”
If Republican senators’ antics during the confirmation process pass as acceptable to Hemingway, then they bear repeating.
During a Senate floor speech on Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) suggested that Jackson would have defended Nazi war criminals.
Last month, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) concluded his grievance-filled questioning of Jackson by storming out of the Senate chamber.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), meanwhile, alleged that public defenders like Jackson choose the role “because their heart is with criminal defendants. Their heart is with the murderers, the criminals, and that’s who they’re rooting for.” The Texas senator also asked Jackson if she thought that “babies are racist,” and, along with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), hyped up the topic of Jackson’s child pornography sentencing record, likely knowing the appeal of such questioning to followers of QAnon.
And then there was Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)’s request that Jackson define “woman”—an irrelevant question, as Jackson pointed out.
Hemingway sought to depict the confirmation hearings for Jackson as the opposite of those for Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Democrats were “horrible” to the Trump nominee, Hemingway claimed, accusing him “of being a serial gang rapist on no evidence whatsoever.” (Three women accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, which he denied.)
Earlier on Thursday, the Senate voted to confirm Jackson 53-47 to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. Despite the bipartisan support she received, some GOP lawmakers, including Graham, apparently couldn’t even bother to put on a tie to cast their vote on the Senate floor, and thus did so from the cloakroom.
