The Advocate, Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper, published an op-ed on Saturday calling their senator John Kennedy (R-La.) an “embarrassment” and urged him not to cause any “international incidents”.
Kennedy was embarrassed at a gun violence hearing last Tuesday when he asked Dr. Megan Ranney, the dean of Yale’s School of Public Health, whether gun violence in Chicago was due to residents having guns in their homes for protection or hunting or because of “a finite group of criminals who have rap sheets as long as King Kong’s arm?.” Ranney pointed out that some red states with lax gun laws, including Kennedy’s home state of Louisiana, has higher firearm death rates than blue Chicago.
“No disrespect, doc, but that sounds a lot like word salad to me,” Kennedy responded.
In the op-ed titled ‘How much lower can John Kennedy go?,’ The Advocate staff columnist Stephanie Grace said the senator continues to bring embarrassment to the state. She cited Kennedy’s recent remarks at the Senate hearing and a comment he made about President Joe Biden.
“So why bring all this up again, other than to point out the ongoing embarrassment he brings to our state?,” Grace wrote. “Because it’s getting worse. Because recently Kennedy crossed yet another line, beyond even the serial demeaning of his political opponents. Because he, a United States senator, called the president of the United States a “weenie” of a world leader.”
Grace was referring to comments Kennedy made in an interview with Fox News in October where he called Biden a “weenie on national defense” amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“Our enemies have concluded that America has a president who is a bit of a weenie on national defense, and Xi, Putin and Ayatollah think they can roll over him like thunder on a summer night,” Kennedy said. “And that’s, I think, why we’re here. Peace through weakness never works. These are hard men.”
He later fundraised off of the comment, sending out emails with the subject line: “The world sees Biden as a weenie.”
In Saturday’s column, Grace argued that Kennedy’s ‘weenie’ remark was not a “routine attack” on Biden.
“It was a statement that could well undermine the standing of our president and our country on the international stage, at a time of tremendous peril and need for strong, unified American leadership,” she wrote, adding “would it be too much to ask that [Kennedy] at least try not to cause any international incidents?”
