This week’s back-to-back Senate confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments began with flying (though mainly white) colors on Tuesday for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), the president-elect’s pick for attorney general. Between protesters dressed in KKK regalia and Sessions’ apparent agreement with waterboarding (and torture) being illegal, the 70-year-old politician’s time on Capitol Hill definitely wasn’t boring. Though as Late Night host Seth Meyers pointed out in his latest “A Closer Look” segment on Tuesday, Sessions’ first day of testimony also proved to be rather… weird for both the Alabama senator and his fellow senate members — many of whom he’s known and worked with for years.
Meyers was especially intrigued by comments made by Democratic senators ahead of Sessions’ testimony, as much of it pertained to their apparently frequent workout sessions at the gym:
“[There are many] examples of why the Senate needed to aggressively question Sessions today, but complicating that effort was the fact that Sessions is currently a member of the Senate. Which means he has personal relationships with a lot of the senators who questioned him. In fact, before the hearing, multiple Democratic senators went out of their way to point out that they exercise with Sessions in the Senate gym.”
Or as newly elected Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) put it in a Fox New clip, “You know I go to the gym. We’re on the bikes together with Sen. Sessions.” Following this and additional clips of Schumer and other senators delivering these gym-themed talking points, Meyers joked “just when you think senators couldn’t be more out of touch with everyday Americans, they think it’s okay to talk to people in the gym.”
Seeing as how Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) accused Sessions of misrepresenting the total number of desegregation cases he’d filed as Alabama’s attorney general, it’s a good bet they don’t bike together during their regularly scheduled “bro time” at the gym.