A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
The confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney general, dominated the news on Tuesday. Sessions’ congressional appearance, which kicked off a week of confirmation hearings for Trump nominees, was repeatedly interrupted by protesters decrying Sessions’ past. The Alabama senator’s nomination to a federal judgeship 30 years ago was rejected after he was accused of calling a black assistant U.S. attorney, who worked for Sessions in Alabama, “boy” and made jokes about the Ku Klux Klan. Sessions denied the accusations. But at Tuesday’s hearing, waves of protests disrupted the proceedings. Two protesters yelled, “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” Others were dressed as KKK members.
Conservative media dismissed the protests and, as they have since Trump tapped Sessions in November, defended his nomination. They also zeroed in on a since-deleted tweet from MTV News writer Ira Madison that this morning accused Sessions of using his Asian American granddaughter as a prop to defend himself from charges of racism. Madison deleted the tweet, which asked Sessions to “kindly return this Asian baby to the Toys ‘R’ Us you stole her from,” writing, “I often tell jokes, but seeing as bringing up Sessions’ history of racial hatred of Asians is seen as an attack on his grandchild, I deleted.”
The headline on Sean Hannity’s website read: “SICK: Liberal Writer Attacks Jeff Sessions’ Asian Granddaughter.” Breitbart wrote that Madison “attacked Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions and his Asian-American granddaughter.” The Daily Caller didn’t mention Madison’s tweet but published a post on Sessions’ “adorable” granddaughter, noting that she “stole the show” at the hearing, that Sessions played with her during opening statements, and that he “planted a kiss on [her] cheek” as he stood up.
The Daily Caller also slammed the lawyer, Thomas Figures, who accused Sessions of racism in the 1980s. Under the headline “’Very Paranoid’: We Did a Deep Dive on the Witness Who Accuses Sessions of Racial Bias. What We Found Is Not Pretty,” writer Kevin Daley cited “colleagues and estranged family” as saying that Figures, who died in 2015, was an “office loner” with a “history of erratic and disturbed behavior.”
National Review addressed Sessions’ hearing with a condemnation of some Democrats’ plans to obstruct Trump nominees, which it deemed hypocritical given what it called the “GOP’s mild acquiescence to Obama’s cabinet picks” in 2009.
