Chuck Grassley has bizarre midnight Twitter meltdown about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was facing a 10pm eastern time deadline tonight to inform the Senate Judiciary Committee about whether she intends to show up next week to testify against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The Republicans on the committee have been offering her the most disingenuous terms possible. Tonight, just before the deadline, Ford asked the committee for one more day to make her decision. This prompted Chuck Grassley, the committee chair, to post a bizarre late night tweet in response.
An hour and a half after the deadline passed, here’s what Chuck Grassley posted to his official Twitter account: “Five times now we hv granted extension for Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w her desire stated one wk ago that she wants to tell senate her story Dr Ford if u changed ur mind say so so we can move on I want to hear ur testimony. Come to us or we to u.” Then Grassley posted this followup tweet: “Judge Kavanaugh I just granted another extension to Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w the statement she made last week to testify to the senate She shld decide so we can move on I want to hear her. I hope u understand. It’s not my normal approach to b indecisive.” From there, Grassley began tweeting about – we’re not kidding – playing the trombone.
Grassley has a consistent bad habit of using this kind of weird shorthand and lack of punctuation in his tweets, making them read something out of a text message by a junior high school kid with a broken keyboard. But even once you get past the infantile writing style, what Grassley is saying here is – shall we say – odd. “Come to us or we to u” almost sounds like he’s saying he’s willing to show up at her house and hold her testimony there. That’s not remotely realistic, considering she’s had to go into hiding due to numerous death threats.
Everything that Chuck Grassley says or writes these days is fairly disjointed to begin with. But this strange and semi-coherent tweet suggests that he really doesn’t know how to handle this situation. He’s unwilling to cave to any of Dr. Ford’s entirely reasonable demands, such as an FBI investigation, and committee testimony from other relevant witnesses. But he’s once again making clear that he knows he needs her testimony, and that he’s afraid to move forward without it. In any case, Ford just got her extension.
