Wednesday marked the third day of questioning for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson—and the third day of astonishingly ugly attacks from Republican lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
These shameless stooges have repeatedly tried to brand the highly decorated federal judge, who would make history as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, as soft on child pornography. (It’s really just cheap chum to the GOP’s conspiracy-minded, QAnon-obsessed base.)
“She has said that the fact that she was even nominated shows how far we’ve come as a country, and so some of the Republican senators on the committee have been hard at work to show how far we haven’t,” offered Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night, adding, “Three of them in particular—[Josh] Hawley, [Lindsey] Graham, and [Ted] Cruz—have been putting on a three-ring circle jerk this week, desperately trying to get a sound bite that might make it onto Fox News.”
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Kimmel argued that Sen. Hawley (R-MO), who served as hype man for the Jan. 6 insurrection, “has been working so hard to insinuate that Judge Jackson—a Harvard-educated, 51-year-old mother of two daughters—is somehow cool with child pornography. They’ve been beating this drum for three days now.”
Cue Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who remarked to Judge Jackson: “You have done what 80 percent of the judges have done. You’re in the mainstream of sentencing when it comes to child-pornography cases. I also think it’s ironic that the senator from Missouri, who unleashed this discredited attack, refuses to acknowledge that his own choice for federal judge in the Eastern District of Missouri has done exactly what you did.”
The camera then caught Hawley looking thoroughly embarrassed and defeated. “And at that moment, for the first time in his life, Josh Hawley realized that he sucks,” cracked Kimmel.
But alas, there was more. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is so terrible she radicalized Taylor Swift, tried to engage Judge Jackson in some light transphobic banter, even though the topic had no relevance during the proceedings.
“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” asked Sen. Blackburn.
“Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,” replied Judge Jackson.
Cue Kimmel: “Hold on, I know the answer: You are a horrible woman.”
