At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday about the plan to deport many people from the country, Republican Senator John Kennedy, as he always does, troubled the witness with questions that he did not care to hear the answers to.
The article, titled “How Mass Deportation Will Divide America’s Families, Hurt Our Armed Forces, and Destroy Our Economy,” focused on the damage of Trump’s immigration policy. But in a strange line of questioning, Kennedy asked the same question over and over while pretending not to hear the answer.
Witness Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an official at the American Immigration Council, testified that the campaign to deport more people in the country can cost up to a billion dollars and cause a loss of the domestic product of 4.2 to 6.8 percent.
Louisiana’s John Kennedy was particularly upset by a November 2022 tweet in which Reichlin-Melnick criticized Texas and Louisiana for taking legal action against the Department of Homeland Security “for NOT deporting Haitian immigrants to Haiti under Article 42,” when, in fact, he he wrote, Title 42 deportations decreased “because Haitians stopped crossing illegally!”
“Both Texas and Louisiana have their knives out for black immigrants,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote at the time. “As soon as the Haitians stopped crossing illegally, it is now said that the plaintiffs again want the federal court to grant Title 42 to the Haitians to prevent them from entering the ports of entry.”
Kennedy, apparently offended by the criticism from two years ago, asked if Reichlin-Melnick remembered the tweet. The witness said that he did not remember the exact circumstances.
“Who in Texas had their “knives” on black immigrants?” Kennedy asked anyway, and Reichlin-Melnick began to answer before being interrupted by Kennedy, who ordered, “Give me a name.”
As Kennedy spoke about himself—saying, “Name me. Name me. Name me.”—Reichlin-Melnick responded that she might be referring to the nation’s attorneys general, mentioning Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by name.
“Give me a name,” Kennedy continued.
“I just did,” said Reichlin-Melnick.
“Don’t you have a name?” asked Kennedy.
“I just said Ken Paxton,” replied Reichlin-Melnick.
“Don’t you have a name?” asked Kennedy, again.
“I just said Ken Paxton,” Reichlin-Melnick repeated.
This is not the first time that Kennedy has failed to function properly, as the Heartland Signal progressive reports, while betting on a congressional witness. In September, during a hearing on anti-Arab and American Jews, the senator accused Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Kennedy spoke about Berry’s denials several times, making headlines for telling him he should “hide [her] head in the bag.”