On Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Jimmy Kimmel spent some time talking about the various lines of attack Republicans have attempted against Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson. And what appears to have stood out for Kimmel is that the attacks are kind of pathetic; and while he didn’t say they were racist too, he did strongly suggest as much.
“We got a full day of nonsense from the Senate. On day two of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing,” which Kimmel said was “infuriating.”
“Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made an opening statement yesterday, got praise from both sides of the aisle. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said he liked it and his wife liked it too. So Judge Jackson got the coveted Barbara Grassley seal of approval,” Kimmel joked.
“But not every Republican was impressed. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Josh Hawley were like, ‘You lost us at ‘Kentaji,’” Kimmel joked.
“This is Josh Hawley. This guy, what a creep this guy is. He’s a senator from Missouri. Spent much of his 30 allotted minutes reading a list of child porn videos from a case the judge worked. He did. That’s not a joke,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel was referring to a falsehood Hawley keeps telling, that Jackson was lenient on defendants in child pornography cases and in a way at odds with other members of the judiciary. This is not true, as her sentencing of such cases was normal and unremarkable until Republicans settled on the objection. And yet, Hawley keeps telling this lie. Also, Hawley has personally voted yes on multiple judges with records similar to Jacksons.
But now, back to Kimmel, who said Hawley is “trying to throw meat to these Q Anuts and also smear a woman, who’s a mother of two daughters, who quite clearly is not pro-child porn.”
Then Kimmel showed a photo of Hawley “sharing an elbow bump with Matt Gaetz. A fine, upstanding American, who very innocently Venmos teenage girls because he’s nice, is why he does that,” the host said. Kimmel was of course referring to the ongoing investigation into whether or not Gaetz paid money to have sex with underage women.
“But despite the gratuitous attacks,” Kimmel continued, “Judge Jackson has been very cool under pressure. They don’t have anything real to criticize, so they’ve been trying to portray her as being soft on crime. Which is interesting because she’s been endorsed by both the international association of police chiefs and the fraternal order of police.”
“And the band The Police. Even Sting is in her corner,” Kimmel joked.
“It’s funny listening to the same people who let the President get away with trying to overthrow the government call anyone soft on crime, but this is how it goes,” Kimmel said. Then he showed a photo of a Republican Party tweet from earlier in the day, which contained a photo of Jackson, but with her initial crossed out and replaced with the letter CRT, as in “critical race theory.”
Notably, Jackson is not known to have ever publicly discussed this concept. It’s just something the GOP did, and Kimmel was pretty certain there was a reason for it.
“I think your dog whistle’s busted, guys. Everyone can hear it now,” he said.
Kimmel then did a quick supercut comparing and contrasting questions from Democratic and Republican senators and well, you can see for yourself. Watch the whole thing above.