During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) questioned the Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, Dr. Megan Ranney. The lively exchange with the Senator insisting that Ranney speak to violence in Chicago, led Kennedy — with a thick Southern accent — to describe the rap sheet of a group of criminals as being “as long as King Kong’s arm.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA): “Why do you think that Chicago has become America's largest outdoor shooting range?”
— The Recount (@therecount) November 28, 2023
Dr. Megan Ranney of the Yale School of Public Health: “Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri actually have higher firearm death rates.” pic.twitter.com/K70KPNZ7As
The “King Kong” colloquialism, which Kennedy has used before, and the video of Kennedy at the hearing (above) has Democrats re-circulating a video made by Democrat Gary Chambers, Jr., who ran against Kennedy in the 2022 Senate election in Louisiana.
In the video (below), Chambers noted that when Kennedy left the Democratic Party in 2007 to become a Republican, “he switched his accent.”
I'd heard the accusation that Kennedy cornponed his accent, but never seen it. Wow. https://t.co/209uqbgfM0
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 29, 2023
Today, MSNBC liberal political commentator Lawrence O’Donnell amplified the Chambers campaign video with the caption: “The fakest accent in Senate history?” ‘Never Trumper’ conservative political scientist Tom Nichols of The Atlantic also re-shared the video and wrote: “I’d heard the accusation that Kennedy cornponed his accent, but never seen it. Wow.”
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