GOP Sen. John Kennedy Freaks Out When Reminded He Used To Be A Democrat

WASHINGTON ― Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on Thursday tried to smear one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees by repeatedly calling her a Marxist, an accusation rooted in nothing other than this nominee being a Democrat.

But his effort backfired spectacularly when the Louisiana Republican was reminded that he, too, used to be a Democrat.

“Are you still a Marxist?” Kennedy asked Melissa DuBose, Biden’s nominee for a U.S. district court in Rhode Island. It was his very first question in DuBose’s nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he gave zero context.

“I am not nor have I ever been a Marxist,” replied DuBose, who is now a state district judge.

They went back and forth. Kennedy suggested she was lying under oath about being a secret Marxist, citing an interview she did in 2000 when she was working at a coffee shop and said she was “in my Marxist phase.”

DuBose replied that she was interviewed 24 years ago by an undergraduate student who wanted to become a teacher, and DuBose, who was then teaching civics and history in Providence’s public schools, told her she was considering teaching a course on political theory. “I immersed myself in a ton of political theory,” she said, citing the works of philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, yes, Karl Marx.

DuBose also said she didn’t know the interview had been published, which is why she didn’t turn it in to the committee.

Kennedy acted as if she hadn’t said any of that.

“My question is real simple,” he said. “Are you still a Marxist?”

“I am not a Marxist,” DuBose said again, as Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) made the same allegation. “I do not espouse Marxist theory or ideology. I never have, I never will. I’m a