Sen. Foghorn Leghorn strikes again
Sen. John Kennedy has played the bigot for the TV cameras and embarrassed Louisiana again
Sen. John Kennedy is a bigot — or, at least, he plays one on television.
On Tuesday, Kennedy accused a Muslim Arab-American witness testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee of supporting terrorism. When Maya Berry — executive director of the Arab American Institute, a nonpartisan national civil rights organization — disputed the baseless charge, Kennedy rudely told her to “hide her head in a bag.”
Here is a summary exchange, as first reported by HuffPost reporter Jennifer Bendery:
“You support Hamas, do you not?” Kennedy asked Berry to gasps from audience members.
“Senator, oddly enough, I’m going to say thank you for that question, because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today,” Berry replied. “Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support. But you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country.”
Kennedy pressed ahead, now asking Berry if she supported Hezbollah.
“Again, I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing, senator,” Berry said before Kennedy interrupted her to demand a yes or no.
“The answer is I don’t support violence whether it’s Hezbollah, Hamas, or any other entity that invokes it,” she said. “So no, sir.”
“You can’t bring yourself to say no, can you?” Kennedy replied, heedless that Berry had just said “no.”
When Kennedy, his voice now louder and more belligerent, asked Berry if she supported Iran, Berry replied, “I think it’s exceptionally disappointing that you’re looking at an Arab American witness before you and saying, ‘You support Hamas.’”
Kennedy, who should have apologized, said instead, “You should hide your head in a bag.”
You can watch the video of the exchange at this link.
Kennedy’s questioning of Berry is reminiscent of another shameful confrontation with a committee witness in November 2021. As I wrote in the Washington Post at the time:
Many Americans took fresh notice of Louisiana’s sardonic junior U.S. senator, John Neely Kennedy, last week when the Republican lawmaker questioned the patriotism of President Biden’s nominee for comptroller of the currency.
“I don’t know whether to call you ‘professor’ or ‘comrade,’” Kennedy told Saule Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor, during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on which Kennedy serves.
When Kennedy asked if she had a resignation letter from the Communist youth group the Soviet-controlled Kazakhstan government forced her to join as a child, Omarova responded, “Senator, I’m not a Communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.” Omarova told Kennedy the Communist regime persecuted her family, adding, “That’s who I am. I remember that history. I came to this country. I’m proud to be an American.”
It’s doubtful Kennedy would be reckless or offensive enough to ask similar questions of a Black witness, overtly using a person’s Blackness as a pretext to accuse them of a crime or smear them as unAmerican.
But in today’s Republican Party and John Kennedy’s bigoted brain, it’s fine to play Archie Bunker when questioning an Arab American or Asian American.
And it’s okay to smear immigrants as dog-eating savages.
As GOP Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance said this week when challenged about the lies that he and Trump are spreading about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
It's all about “the smear” with Trump, Vance, Kennedy, and their ilk. Utter the lie, plant the innuendo, and ask the question based on a falsehood. Ruin someone’s reputation because it helps you win votes or gets you a segment on Fox News.
(By the way, did you notice that in both instances before his committees, the target of Kennedy’s bigotry was a woman?)
What makes all this extra disappointing is that Kennedy is playing the bigot for the cameras because it’s what he thinks his constituents and Fox News audiences want.
Anyone who’s known Kennedy since the 1980s or 1990s knows he’s a liberal Democrat who’s sold his soul to the far Right to win elected office.
Again, as I wrote in the Washington Post in 2021:
Whenever Kennedy appears on Fox News or launches an attention-getting stunt, those of us in Louisiana who know him well roll our eyes and reflect on the Kennedy we knew before his Senate election.
We recall the brainy graduate of Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia Law School and Oxford University’s Magdalen College; the relatively progressive Democrat who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004; the man who, despite his 2007 party switch, served capably as state treasurer from 2000 to 2017; the official who, although in the same Republican Party as then-Gov. Bobby Jindal, was a fierce critic of Jindal’s reckless fiscal policies.
Mostly, we wonder what happened to the reasonable, non-incendiary Kennedy we once knew.
In preparing this piece, I found a lengthy interview Kennedy did in October 2004 with the Shreveport Times. In pitching his Democratic Senate candidacy, he was articulate, restrained and progressive. He scorned the tax cuts for wealthy Americans that then-President George W. Bush had signed. He favored increasing the federal minimum wage.
He was no Bernie Sanders liberal, but he was the progressive Democrat in the race — so much so that some prominent Black leaders, including our congressional delegation’s most liberal member, Rep. William J. Jefferson of New Orleans, backed him.
John Kennedy plays the bigoted hillbilly for the cameras because he has no respect for his constituents. He thinks they’re all just as ignorant and racist as the character he plays on TV.
By the way, if you’d like to tell Kennedy otherwise, the phone number for his Washington office is (202) 224 4623.
Shameful. Kennedy is another intelligent man pandering to the lowest of his supporters. I am ashamed that he is one of my senators.
Peg’s hubby here
Were I seated in Ex Dir Maya’s chair, I would have replied “Senator, are you a supporter of the Klan?”
When he suggested I should hide my head in a bag, I would have suggested he get his out of his ass.
One impertinence deserves another