Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy joins the growing list of Republican senators attacking President Joe Biden’s Supreme court nominee even though the president is yet to make a decision.
All we know at his point is that Biden pledged to keep a promise he made on the campaign trail to nominate a Black woman for the court.
That is all Republican senators need to launch their racially motivated attacks against the nominee and on Wednesday Kennedy added his voice to that list.
According to Politico Playbook at a private Senate Republican lunch on Tuesday, Kennedy, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, “didn’t exactly tamp down his rhetoric” as Republican Senate leadership discussed whether it was “counterproductive” for the GOP to fight Biden’s SCOTUS nominee given that they do not have the votes to block the nomination and the strategy could “backfire.”
That message never got through to Kennedy who attacked Biden’s potential nominee as soon as he stepped out of that lunch.
“No. 1, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog,” he said. “No. 2, I want a nominee who’s not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a ‘woke agenda.’”
Many social media users saw racial undertones in the Kennedy’s comments about the J. Crew catalog. Former first lady Michelle Obama, a Black woman, was known for wearing a lot of J. Crew.
However, it was not the first time he used the phrase.
In February 2020 while discussing the first impeachment articles against Trump Kennedy said: “Anyone who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog does not take this charge seriously.”
“Anyone who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog knows that Democrats’ attempt to add D.C. as a state is unconstitutional,” he said in a Fox News interview last year.
Sometimes he used other variations of the phrase. For example, while discussing whether then-President Donald Trump had the authority to declare a national emergency in 2019 over the border wall, Kennedy told Fox: “Past presidents have used the National Emergencies Act 60 times. Anybody who knows an L.L. Bean catalog from a law book knows, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court will give us guidance on this.”
