Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell succeeded in his effort to put the credibly accused sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court — but he can’t stop complaining.
Last week, he whined that he and his fellow Republican senators had to endure the trauma of hearing sexual assault survivors beg them not to vote for an attempted rapist. But now McConnell is upping the rhetoric — and the audacity.
“We were literally under assault,” McConnell told reporters Monday. “These demonstrators — I’m sure some of them were well meaning citizens, but many of them were obviously trained to get in our faces, to go to our homes out there, to basically almost attack us in the halls of the capitol.”
Of course, according to the standard set by McConnell, Trump, and their fellow Republicans, no assault took place unless the “victims” — Republican men of the Senate — immediately filed police reports, went to the FBI, and can provide multiple corroborating witnesses and other physical evidence.
Besides, even if women did assault these senators, why does it suddenly matter? Republicans made clear last week that attacking someone doesn’t mean you’re not a good person in their eyes.
The truth, of course, is that none of these Republican senators were assaulted — literally or otherwise. Instead, they were confronted by women who have actually survived assault and who pleaded with their senators not to put a man credibly accused of attempted rape on the highest court in the land.
“What you are doing is allowing someone who actually violated a woman to sit on the Supreme Court,” one woman said to Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake. That hardly constitutes a “basically almost attack,” as McConnell is claiming.
When another pair of survivors confronted Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, he sneered at them. “I know this is enjoyable for y’all,” he said.
Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch told another group of women to “grow up.”
It’s bad enough that McConnell and the GOP have spent weeks demeaning and disrespecting assault survivors, accusing them of lying, being “mixed up,” or perpetrating a “hoax” — all to defend a belligerent, lying, hyperpartisan sexual predator.
But for elected Republicans to now claim they are the real victims of assault is disgraceful.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
