Sen. Ben Sasse Dismisses Outcry Over Brett Kavanaugh as 'Hysteria' 

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse—he of the aggressive overbite and an inexplicable penchant for push-ups—has styled himself as a Republican in the mold of Jeff Flake: a man quick with his criticism of Donald Trump while voting in line with the president’s positions 86.7 percent of the time.

Despite his self-staked position as a Republican maverick, Sasse sure sounded pretty in line with Trumpism during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, describing outrage over Kavanaugh’s conservative positions and the possibility that his appointment would drag the court even further rightward as “hysteria”—totally not a gendered term at all!!!—not once, not twice, but thrice.

“People are going to pretend that Americans have no historical memory, and supposedly there haven’t been screaming protesters saying, ‘Women are going to die’ at every hearing for decades,” Sasse said. He continued: “The fact that the hysteria has nothing to do with [Kavanaugh] means that we should ask what’s the hysteria coming from? The hysteria around Supreme Court confirmation hearings is coming from the fact that we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Supreme Court in American life now.”