(HorizonPost.com) – Olympic skier Gus Schumacher went to Washington last week to testify before the Senate Budget Committee in a hearing on climate change and ended up getting humiliated by Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy, the Daily Caller reported.
During questioning, Senator Kennedy told the cross-country Olympian skier that he always researches the expert witnesses who advise the government because he likes to “know who I’m talking to.”
Kennedy then questioned Schumacher on some of his social media posts.
In June 2020, Schumacher retweeted a post from someone who claimed that the “war on drugs” was designed for the mass incarceration of black people.
When Kennedy asked Schumacher who specifically created the war on drugs, the skier said he couldn’t recall the tweet and said it was not germane to the subject of the hearing.
Schumacher explained that he was called to testify before the committee “as an athlete” to give the senators his story and “what I’ve seen in my field.”
Kennedy then noted another tweet that Schumacher reposted in August 2020 from someone calling for police to be abolished.
The Republican senator asked Schumacher if he thought “we ought to abolish the police.”
Schumacher again noted that this was not the topic of the hearing or the subject he was there to testify on.
Kennedy asked Schumacher if he thought the police should be abolished before or after the country got rid of fossil fuels. However, Schumacher said he would not address the question.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday evening, Senator Kennedy described Schumacher’s appearance before the Senate Budget Committee as an example of the “Kardashianing of America.”
Kennedy slammed the Democrat senators for inviting Schumacher to testify in the first place and compared his appearance to the “gormless pop singers and movie stars” who lecture Americans incessantly but “have to lie down if they think too hard.”
Kennedy said Schumacher should not present himself as an expert or “have an opinion” if he could not defend it.
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