U.S Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii reacted with outrage after reading The New York Times‘s recent article about allegations made in a newly published book about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Times piece, which was written by the book’s authors, notes that the book – titled The Education of Brett Kavanaugh – discusses allegations in which a woman named Deborah Ramirez, who was a Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh more than 30 years ago, now claims that a drunken Kavanaugh once exposed his penis to her during a campus party. The article further reports that another “former classmate,” Max Stier, claims to have personally seen the incident in question. But the article never mentions Stier’s deep ties to the Democratic Party – most notably, he worked for President Bill Clinton in the 1990s while Kavanaugh was a member of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigative team which looked into Clinton’s misconduct in office. Nor does the article mention that Ramirez has refused to be interviewed about the alleged incident; that all three of the friends whom she has identified as witnesses steadfastly maintain that it never occurred; and that all three friends have stated that not even Ramirez herself can recall the incident.
Despite the paucity of evidence against Kavanaugh, Hirono said Monday in a statement: “Brett Kavanaugh should never have been confirmed to the Supreme Court. It was plain to me and many others at the time that the FBI ‘investigation’ into the serious, corroborated allegations of sexual assault by Justice Kavanaugh was a sham. New reporting from the New York Times further proves it…. The House Judiciary Committee should immediately begin an impeachment inquiry to determine whether Justice Kavanaugh lied to Congress and why the FBI wasn’t permitted to investigate all credible allegations against him.”
Hirono’s outrage regarding the allegations against Kavanaugh is emblematic of the manner in which she has conducted herself throughout her entire political career: as a raging, vengeful individual motivated chiefly by her own personal hatreds and grievances. Indeed, she received a strong grounding in the politics of grievance during her college years, when she determined that Betty Friedan‘s The Feminine Mystique, which depicted mothers and housewives as miserable victims of patriarchal oppression, was “the most influential” book to which she had ever been exposed.
Hirono was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives – and the Congressional Progressive Caucus – from 2007-2013. Since then, she has occupied seats on several powerful Senate committees and subcommittees, including the Armed Services Committee, the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, the Subcommittee on Seapower, and the Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Hirono was a determined opponent of Donald Trump from the moment of his 2016 election to the White House. When Trump in September 2017 announced his wish to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — which had been put into effect by a 2012 executive action through which then-President Barack Obama provided many illegal aliens with temporary work authorization as well as protection from deportation — Hirono condemned Trump’s “cruel and unnecessary” effort to “attack minority communities and stoke the fear and divisiveness that served as pillars of his campaign and inform his presidency.”
In October 2017, Hirono denounced President Trump’s decision to decertify the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) — a 2015 accord whereby the Obama administration (and the governments of five other nations) had agreed to allow the Islamist regime in Tehran to enrich uranium, build advanced centrifuges, purchase ballistic missiles, fund terrorism, and be guaranteed of a near-zero breakout time to the construction of a nuclear bomb approximately a decade down the road. “In making the dangerous, political decision to decertify Iran’s compliance with the agreement, Donald Trump is jeopardizing our national security by undermining the harsh restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program established by JCPOA,” Hirono stated.
In December 2017, less than a year into Trump’s presidency, Hirono — in light of renewed allegations by three women claiming that Trump had inappropriately fondled or groped them years earlier — called for the president to step down from office: “[T]he only way to stop this president that has a narcissistic need for attention — he’s a misogynist and admitted sexual predator and a liar — the only thing that will stop him from attacking us — because nobody is safe — is his resignation.”
In January 2018, Hirono accused Trump of racism after the president had reportedly asked, during a White House meeting with a handful of U.S. senators, why the United States was accepting immigrants from “sh**hole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador, and certain nations in Africa. On CNN’s New Day, Hirono said: “He made clear that … he wants, basically, [only] white people to come to our country.”
During a May 22, 2018 interview on MSNBC, Hirono suggested that Trump’s mindset was akin to that of a totalitarian dictator: “The difference between a democracy and a totalitarian government is the rule of law. So, you have a president, Trump, who has attacked the media. He’s gone after judges who don’t agree with him. He’s certainly going after the intelligence community, the FBI, the Department of Justice. And these are the kinds of actions taken by people like Erdogan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines, and, of course, Putin in Russia — all three dictators, basically. The president very much admires them. So, the rule of law, with regard to this president, is of no consequences [sic]. He does not respect the rule of law.”
On October 7, 2018, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Hirono to comment on recent incidents where leftist/Democrat protesters had harassed Republican officials in restaurants and at their own homes. The senator replied: “I think that it just means that there are a lot of people who are very, very much motivated about what is going on….” When Bash, not having received a direct answer, again asked if protesters should “be going after people at restaurants,” Hirono said: “Well, this is what happens, because when you look at white supremacists and all that, this is what’s coming forth in our country, there’s a tremendous divisiveness in our country. But this is the kind of activism that occurs and people make their own decisions. If they violate the law, then they have to account for that.”
Hirono’s latest irresponsible, unfounded attacks against Brett Kavanaugh are not at all surprising. They merely reflect the vast reservoir of hatred which she holds in her heart for the president who appointed him.
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