The San Francisco Chronicle is out with a bombshell report that reports “colleagues” of California Dem Dianne Feinstein, 88, say she is “now mentally unfit to serve” as a U.S. Senator:
San Francisco Chronicle: “Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions” https://t.co/LWdBrUGKID
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) April 14, 2022
And “colleagues” from the headline undersells it. The article quotes four U.S. Senators and three former staffers (all anonymous, of course):
Four senators as well as three former staffers and the CA lawmaker told The Chronicle that her memory is deteriorating and it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work to represent the nearly 40M people of CAhttps://t.co/JbCucVl38R
— Tal Kopan (@TalKopan) April 14, 2022
From the article:
Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.
CBS News’ Ed Okeefe thinks these anonymous sources should go on the record, which is funny because many national media stories are based on anonymous sources sometimes with just a single source:
At this point, if there are lawmakers so concerned about the cognitive abilities of the senior senator of the nation’s largest state, they should say this on the record. And news outlets should demand they do so, too. https://t.co/ZCBlUxkLyt
— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) April 14, 2022
Yikes. This sounds . . . bad:
“I’ve worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details…All of that is gone”:
“I’ve worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details…All of that is gone,” one of Feinstein’s colleagues tells the @sfchronicle. https://t.co/9aSkpESCkp
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) April 14, 2022
More from the article:
When a CA Dem in Congress recently had an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like they’d had with her many times over the years.
Instead, they had to reintroduce themselves multiple times. https://t.co/pO1y5PUzbb
— Tal Kopan (@TalKopan) April 14, 2022
One anonymous senator told the paper “it’s bad, and it’s getting worse”:
“It’s bad, and it’s getting worse,” said one Democratic senator.
Much more: https://t.co/JbCucVl38R— Tal Kopan (@TalKopan) April 14, 2022
Welp. She’s a punchline now?
One California lawmaker: "There’s a joke on the Hill, we’ve got a great junior senator in Alex Padilla and an experienced staff in Feinstein’s office." https://t.co/Y7X9DX2qCW
— Anthony Adragna (@AnthonyAdragna) April 14, 2022
Sen. Feinstein released a statement saying “The last year has been extremely painful and distracting for me, flying back and forth to visit my dying husband” and “there’s no question I’m still serving and delivering for the people of California, and I’ll put my record up against anyone’s”:
“The last year has been extremely painful and distracting for me, flying back and forth to visit my dying husband,” Feinstein said via statement. “But there’s no question I’m still serving and delivering for the people of California, and I’ll put my record up against anyone’s.”
— Tal Kopan (@TalKopan) April 14, 2022
The age issue of Senators, Representatives and presidents *should be” a bipartisan issue, no?
I understand concerns about Dianne Feinstein but read whispers about her in this Senate context: at least 50 senators are 100% dependent on staff, most senators are over 90% dependent on staff & Strom Thurmond died in office in 2003 at age 100 long after obvious mental decline. https://t.co/vSLPTI7P2y
— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) April 14, 2022
These people are voting on tech issues that they don’t have a clue about, as Luke Russert points out here:
Want to be gentle here, but in the context of today’s news re Musk possibly buying Twitter, numerous questions about the future of the internet, should an 88 year old represent America’s most important state and the home of tech companies that dictate world events? https://t.co/woazYS5Tkn
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) April 14, 2022
Bingo:
Way too many members of Congress are technologically illiterate. It’s why the government is so slow to react to so many issues. At the very least, it should not be impolite to ask aloud whether some members are up to the job.
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) April 14, 2022
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