.@SenateMajLdr: "We have hired a female assistant to go on staff and to ask these questions in a respectful and professional way. We want this hearing to be handled very professionally not a political sideshow..." #Kavanaugh pic.twitter.com/N0hGKA6NqX — CSPAN (@cspan) September 25, 2018

During a press availability Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked about the uncomfortable fact that his entire roster of 11 Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee are men and, you know, what kind of message that sends as the GOP bros get set to adjudicate the validity and impact of a woman’s claims of sexual assault? McConnell, by way of defending the gender shutout, succinctly summed up the GOP zeitgeist on Capitol Hill, which is, in a word, clueless.

This was his real response:

Reporter: “All of you standing here today, all men. Everyone on the Judiciary Committee, all men. You don’t have women making decisions about Judge Kavanaugh. What message does that send to the American people?” McConnell: “We’re looking for the truth here. I don’t think because you happen to be a male you’re disqualified from listening to the evidence and making a decision based on the evidence. As I said earlier, and I think you already know, we have hired a female… assistant to go on staff and ask these questions in a respectful and professional way. We want this hearing to be handled very professionally, not a political sideshow like you saw put on by the Democrats when they were questioning Judge Kavanaugh.”

Don’t worry, we hired a female assistant to ask the questions for us. Because optics! Speaking of the optics of indifference, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley scheduled a committee vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for 9:30 a.m. Friday morning, less than 24 hours after Christine Blasey Ford is set to testify.