Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon recap Day 1 of Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing, mock 'Cancun Karen' Ted Cruz

published 22 March 2022

"Today, confirmation hearings began for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson," Jimmy Fallon said on Monday's Tonight Show. "The hearing process will last four days — it's basically C-SPAN's version of Coachella." The Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley, "is 88 years old — when it was his turn to speak, he was like, 'Tell us who you are, and then tell me who I am,'" he joked. "This is cool: I saw that Judge Jackson's parents were at the confirmation hearing. Even crazier, so were Chuck Grassley's."

"These hearings, they give a number of our Republican senators a chance to compete in one of their favorite events, the subtle racism jamboree," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "But Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina got out ahead of that, he said he expects to be called racist at these hearings, and made an interesting comparison when invoking the heated confirmation hearing of Justice Brett Kavanaugh." Maybe not Bill Cosby, but "I actually think they should treat Katanji Brown Jackson exactly like they treated Brett Kavanaugh — interview every single person who's accused her of sexual assault," he said.

"Sen. Ted Cruz was actually Judge Jackson's classmate at Harvard Law School, though she will not likely get his vote," Kimmel said. "He pontificated at length today about not turning this into a political circus," but "the big Ted story today — I don't know if you've seen this — is a video shot at the Bozeman, Montana, airport. A man who looks suspiciously like Ted Cruz has a heated exchange with an airline employee and then after the airline employee, a police officer. Apparently he missed his flight and demanded to speak to the manager of the airport about a dozen times, to the point where they had to call in security."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.