He isn’t happy at all.
As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s blitz four-day confirmation hearing kicks off, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has raged over criticism of Judge J. Michelle Childs by progressives.
The South Carolina Republicans’ remarks are the first comments he made about Jackson since his 15-minute meeting with her last week.
After last week’s meeting, Graham went radio-silent, but hours into Jackson’s four-day hearing, he lamented the candidate he endorsed not receiving the nomination.
During the hearing, Graham questioned Jackson on why progressives threw their support behind her instead of Childs, “The attacks from the left against Judge Childs was really pretty vicious, to be honest with you,” he stated.
Graham, who has voted for many of President Joe Biden’s judicial picks, lambasted Jackson during the hearing, starting his questions about Jackson’s lack of judicial philosophy.
“So, you say, Judge Jackson, you don’t have any judicial philosophy, per se?” he then questioned how that could be the case as “somebody on the left… spent the money they spent to have you in this chair.”
He continued, stating that it mattered “that the groups that came to your aid… threw in their money, their time, their support and threatened Joe Biden if he picked Judge Childs.”
Graham concluded by saying there had been a “wholesale effort” to take his candidate, Judge Childs, out of the running for the Supreme Court seat, calling it a “new game” that was “particularly disturbing” to him.
Graham was one of three Republicans who supported Jackson’s nomination to the D.C. Court of Appeals last year, but his recent remarks confirm that Democrats should not rely on his support to get Jackson a supreme court seat in the 50-50 Senate.
The sentiment that he wouldn’t vote for Jackson was only confirmed when he said: “If that’s the way the game’s going to be played then I’ll have a response, and I don’t expect it to reward that way of playing the game.”
