‘You Either Know or You Don’t Know’ – and Dianne Feinstein Does Not Seem to Know

Jim Newell, writing for Slate under the headline “A Brief, Concerning Conversation With Dianne Feinstein”:

I asked her how she was feeling.

“Oh, I’m feeling fine. I have a problem with the leg.” A fellow reporter staking out the elevator asked what was wrong with the leg.

“Well, nothing that’s anyone concern but mine,” she said.

When the fellow reporter asked her what the response from her colleagues had been like since her return, though, the conversation took an odd turn.

“No, I haven’t been gone,” she said.

OK.

“You should follow the — I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.”

When asked whether she meant that she’d been working from home, she turned feisty.

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she said. “Please. You either know or don’t know.”

After deflecting one final question about those, like Rep. Ro Khanna, who’ve called on her to resign, she was wheeled away.

Feinstein’s months-long absence from the Senate has been one of the biggest political stories (and jokes) of the year. Her senescence is truly sad at a personal level, but the U.S. Senate, ostensibly the greatest deliberative body in the history of democracy, is no place for a person who doesn’t know where she’s been for the last three months. Anyone on her staff or in her family who isn’t urging her to resign ought to be ashamed.

★ Tuesday, 16 May 2023