Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty)

It’s hard to imagine any elected official who deserves less sympathy for their role in helping to place a credibly accused sexual predator on the Supreme Court than Mitch McConnell.




Nevertheless, during a Monday press conference, the Senate Majority Leader—who has done more than just about anyone else to warp the Senate’s role in the judiciary to achieve his ultimate goal of bringing the U.S. back to the 1950s—whined that he and fellow Republican senators were “literally under assault” by protesters opposed to Kavanaugh’s nomination over the past several weeks.

Here’s his full statement, offered before reporters could even ask a single question (emphasis mine):

I couldn’t be prouder of the Senate Republican conference. We were standing up for the presumption of innocence in this country when there were a number of democratic senators on the judiciary committee saying that presumption of innocence no longer applies. And secondly, we were literally under assault. These demonstrators, I’m sure some of them were well-meaning citizens. But many of them were obviously trying to get in our faces, to go to our homes. Basically almost attack us in the halls of the capitol. So it was a full scale effort to intimidate as well as to eliminate fundamental notions of fairness and due process such as the presumption of innocence.


“Literally under assault”? “Almost attack us”? Wow, you’d think Mitch was voting from an underground bunker and not while surrounded by police in one of the most heavily fortified public buildings in the country. (We’ve reached out to the United States Capitol Police for comment on McConnell’s assertion, and will update this story if they respond.)

McConnell’s “woe is me” shtick comes less than one week after he angrily declared that he would not be intimidated by “these people”—by which he, an immeasurably rich and powerful United States Senator, apparently meant horrified survivors of sexual assault.



Meanwhile, with Kavanaugh now on the court, McConnell has achieved his longtime goal of putting a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. Millions of women around the country, coincidentally, could soon find their reproductive health rights “literally under assault.”