What was Mitch McConnell thinking? The GOP leader gave Elizabeth Warren a hand-wrapped political gift by shutting her down on the Senate floor.

Elizabeth Warren couldn't have scripted it any better if she'd tried.

Reading a letter from civil rights icon Coretta Scott King opposing Jeff Sessions for a federal judgeship in 1986, the liberal Massachusetts senator was reprimanded by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader so loathed by Democrats. Warren was then gaveled down by Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and told to take her seat.


The visual of GOP men silencing Warren unleashed a flood of outrage on social media. Democrats quickly began fundraising off of the spectacle. And people tuned into C-SPAN for a late-night Senate session that otherwise would have been ignored, as Sen. Sessions of Alabama plodded toward confirmation despite near-unanimous Democratic opposition.

In an interview on Wednesday morning, Warren insisted she would have preferred continuing to read King's letter into the record and avoid the spectacular parliamentary fight that has consumed the Senate. Sessions, a longtime colleague of McConnell's in the Senate, is expected to be confirmed Wednesday as attorney general.

“I just wanted to read the letter, and I want everybody to read the letter. That’s how I see it. This debate is about Sen. Sessions' nomination to serve as attorney general, the chief law enforcement official in the nation,” Warren said. “These facts are entirely relevant to Sen. Sessions' nomination.”

But there's no question the confrontation galvanized Warren's army of liberal fans. McConnell's rebuke — “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted” — became an instant meme on the left.

McConnell ignored a question about Warren on Wednesday morning, ducking into the chamber to defend Sessions as a “friend of many of us on both sides of the aisle.”

The Tuesday night showdown continued to resonate in the Senate a day later.

"I just find it amazing at a time when we're actually debating the U.S. attorney general, whose job it is to protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans, that a woman was called out reading the words of a black woman," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). "It felt really wrong to all of us."

On the other side of the aisle, Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he heard Warren is "doing fundraising off it. I frankly don't think it's anything to be proud of."

Senators often come close to disrespecting their colleagues and breaking the arcane chamber's rule book barring personal insults of their peers. Most notably, McConnell and Senate Republicans ignored Ted Cruz's attacks on McConnell in 2015 for telling a "lie" about the Export-Import Bank, preferring not to elevate a political opponent. But elevating an opponent is precisely what McConnell did on Tuesday — and the Kentucky Republican is not prone to strategic missteps.

There was no grand strategy, Republicans said, just a burgeoning anger that Warren was destroying whatever vestige of comity remains in the Senate. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the most senior GOP senator, said Democrats had treated Sessions like "dirt."

In her 1986 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, King wrote “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.” At the time, Sessions was a U.S. attorney.

Warren’s reading the letter, McConnell said, had violated a rule that senators cannot “impute to another senator … any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming of a senator.”

"She clearly was in violation of Rule 19. An important point here is the civility and respect to the United States Senate,” Daines said. "Leader McConnell has tremendous respect for the institution of the United States Senate. That is what leadership is all about, is holding all senators to a higher standard.”

But politically, Republicans played right into Democrats’ hands. While the nomination for Sessions was contentious, the result was preordained: another loss for the minority. A vote to silence one of the best-known Democratic senators and potential challenger to President Donald Trump in 2020 changed the entire dynamic.

“In a body that has far too few women, for a senator to say: … ‘The senator shall take her seat,’ should never be uttered,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). “It’s like from a different century. I think it was [because it was] Elizabeth Warren. I think if most other Democratic senators would have said the same words, they wouldn’t have invoked the rule.”

Democrats were surprised by the turn of events, which Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said "appeared to be carefully orchestrated on their side." Late last year, Cornyn suggested Warren had violated Senate rules that he said "prohibited the sort of ad hominem attack, the claims of corruption, selling legislation for campaign contributions" when Warren attacked a medical research bill.

"Sen. Warren has a special talent to get under the skins of Republicans," Durbin said. "I'm sure her speeches bother them more than the speeches of many Democrats."

The organic moment was far more potent than a run-of-the-mill Warren TV hit, Senate speech or tweet — all of which normally draw attention, anyway. She moved immediately to capitalize, reading the rejected letter from King opposing Sessions on Facebook, then turning immediately to TV hits on MSNBC and CNN to play up the conflict.

“The liberal base hangs on her every word; she’s on MSNBC all the time; liberal publications adore her. She doesn’t need us for clicks,” said a senior Republican aide.

In the interview, Warren — who like Trump, has a talent for maximizing media attention on her own terms —downplayed the gush of attention. Her focus, she said, is on Sessions and getting senators to focus on what King said about him. King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died in 2006.

“The letter is powerful, deeply moving and an important historical document. And in 1986 it helped moved a Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee to reject” Sessions, she said. “I hope everyone reads this letter. I hope Republicans read this letter. It’s important.”

On Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, several senators read parts of the letter into the Senate record. No Republicans objected.