Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) reflected on a recently published viral video of him advising children on the presumption of innocence, offering remarks in an interview with Breitbart News Deputy Political Editor Amanda House.
Cassidy was recorded addressing two children accompanying their mother while she was engaging in political activism via demonstration against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.
Watch the aforementioned video below:
Protester demands that GOP Senator @BillCassidy “apologize to my children for ruining their futures.”
Cassidy looks at the kids: “Guess what? Your parents are using you as tools. In the future if somebody makes an allegation against you & there’s no proof for it, you’ll be OK.” pic.twitter.com/y6WKtPhpYO
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 12, 2018
Cassidy said, “My first thought was those children shouldn’t be here. Those children should be in school. Their mother is embarrassing the children, and I was just thinking, ‘Momma, understand, these children should not be part of this process. You’re using them as a prop,’ and so, of course, I was speaking to the children but I was trying to speak to the mom, just have insight into what you’re doing.”
Cassidy continued, “Secondly, if we accept the argument the woman was making, we accept a lie. We accept that someone can be branded without any proof of something terrible, and so therefore disqualified for the rest of their life. So I was also just trying to frame for the children what the true argument is, because that’s the one that will apply to them: Can somebody smear you in the future, and you have no recourse? Because you’ve been smeared with no proof, and your life is ruined. And that’s what we have to push back on.”
Cassidy added, “It didn’t come out for a couple of days and I was thinking there’s no way she was going to post hat. Actually, it disturbed me. When I came back to my office, I just didn’t like the fact that she had her children there. As a parent, I kept thinking of that. Two or three days later, my wife texted me about the video, and I’m thinking, ‘What video?’ That’s when I understood that it took off, and of course it’s great.”
Cassidy concluded, “I want folks to recognize that the day’s Republican Party is proud of our ideas. We’re proud of our principles, and we’re sticking to them and we’re pushing back. They may resort to thuggery. We attempt to resort to reason, and I think that’s our strong suit.”
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter at @rkraychik.
Follow Amanda House on Twitter and Instagram at @amandaleehouse.