Senator John McCain (R-AZ) blasted Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) for saying Republicans were making Loretta Lynch “sit in the back of the bus” on the Senate floor on Thursday.
McCain stated that the comments were “totally inappropriate to be made on the floor of the Senate.” He then continued, “what is beneath the decorum and dignity of the United States Senate, I would say to the Senator from Illinois, is for him to come to this floor and use that imagery, and suggest that racist tactics are being employed to delay Ms. Lynch’s confirmation vote. Such inflammatory rhetoric has no place in this body and serves no purpose other than to further divide us.”
McCain then turned to Durbin’s voting history in the Senate, pointing to his blocking of the nomination of Judge Janice Rogers Brown, whose nomination to the US Court of Appeals was held up for almost two years, and Durbin helped to block.
He also pointed to the work he and Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) did to push for the confirmation of six federal judges in Arizona, including Diane Humetewa, the first Native American woman to serve on the federal bench.
McCain concluded by pointing out that Lynch’s confirmation will be taken up, as soon as Democrats stop filibustering the human trafficking bill, stating “had the Senator from Illinois and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle not filibustered this bill over a manufactured crisis, we could have considered the Lynch nomination this week. They chose otherwise.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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