The Senate confirmed Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr. to be US District Judge for the District of South Carolina Thursday morning, a vote that brought out the deplorable in Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who basically called Democratic leader Chuck Schumer a racist because of his refusal to vote for the nominee, who is white.
Here's Graham:
"I've known Chuck Schumer for years. He is not a racist, but this was an absolutely shameful reason to vote against a very qualified nominee like Marving Quattlebaum.
"This is political correctness run amok. […] I judge nominees on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Chuck Schumer should do the same."
Which is pretty fucking rich from Graham, considering he helped block two of President Obama's nominees to the seat, both of whom happened to be black. This seat had been vacant since October 2013 because of Republican obstruction. Obama's first nomination of Judge Alison Renee Lee was eventually withdrawn after Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) refused to give his approval. Democrats were still in the majority, and were inexplicably honoring Republican obstruction efforts, including this one. Then in February 2016 Obama nominated Justice Donald Beatty of the South Carolina Supreme Court to the job. Neither Graham nor Scott returned blue slips and Justice Beatty never even received a hearing.
That's why Schumer voted no here. In his own words:
"[T]he nomination of Marvin Quattlebaum speaks to the overall diversity of President Trump's selections for the judiciary. Mr. Quattlebaum does not replace one, but two scuttled Obama nominees who were African American. Eighty-three percent of President Trump's [nominees] were male, 92 percent were white. That represents the lowest share of nonwhite candidates in three decades.
"It is long past time that the judiciary starts looking more like the America it represents, having a diversity of views and experience on the federal bench is necessary for the equal administration of justice."
Graham's trolling was, of course, egged on by the far-right, nutjob media. You don't have to look any further than his own press release to see what inspired it—there's a link to a Daily Caller story right there on the page. So yeah, that. Graham's pretending to be an honest broker on anything, like immigration legislation, is just that—a farce.