By now you’ve probably seen the cringeworthy video clip of Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy questioning President Donald Trump’s former judicial nominee Michael Petersen about basic legal knowledge.
Three weeks ago, The Washington Post reports, Kennedy complained to reporters that the White House was ignoring his concerns about the subpar quality of judicial picks. Now he has Trump’s attention.
In just the past week actually, Kennedy’s torpedoed three of the president’s judicial nominees—Brett Talley, Jeff Mateer and Petersen.
In an attempt to find out why the Republican senator keeps bringing down the president’s judicial picks, The Post spoke with several plugged-in observers in Louisiana and Washington, D.C. Three theories have emerged:
1) Kennedy is getting revenge against White House counsel Don McGahn. Trump declined to nominate Kennedy’s first choice for U.S. attorney in New Orleans, defense lawyer Kyle Schonekas. That’s a process McGahn oversees.
2) Kennedy is a former Democrat and still has lots of trial lawyer friends. Kennedy was the legal counsel in the 1980s to then-Democratic Gov. Buddy Roemer. And in 2004, he ran as a pro-John Kerry Democrat against Republican David Vitter for the Senate seat he now holds. “After getting whipped, Kennedy decided to become a Republican. … But he’s still got a lot of his old friends, and they don’t like the ideological edge of Trump’s picks,” The Post says.
3) Kennedy wants to run for governor in 2019, and he thinks this may help him. “Kennedy would face John Bel Edwards, a moderate Democrat who has an approval rating just above 50 percent,” The Post notes. “To pick off some of those voters, he’d want to establish his independent bona fides. He might also see the writing on the wall that this will be a bad environment for Republicans after Roy Moore’s loss in last week’s Alabama special election.”
