Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was quite tense. Between Sen. Pat Leahy’s (D-Vermont) back-and-forth with Donald Trump’s second appointee to the post over Norway and Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Illinois) heated exchange with her over the president’s “sh*thole” comment, the hearing provided plenty of fodder for analysts and Twitter trolls. Then it was Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) turn, the outgoing ranking Senate Republican whose impending absence may result in Mitt Romney’s return to politics. And to get things started, he seemingly removed an invisible pair of glasses.
In a viral video tweeted by The Wrap’s Jon Levine, Hatch reaches up to his eyes in the manner of a person wanting to remove their glasses and finds they’re already off. “Sen. Orrin Hatch removes a pair of glasses he’s not wearing,” noted Levine. Sure anough, as the video from C-SPAN above clearly shows, Hatch goes to remove his glasses — only to suddenly realize that he has already taken them off at some previous point. As CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, he (and likely many others) have “been there” and “done this.” Even so, that didn’t stop the rest of Twitter from roasting the senator for his brief act of misrememberance.
Orrin Hatch forgets he doesn't have glasses on. 🤣
I've done something that is kind of the reverse of this: trying to put eyedrops in when you have glasses on is embarrassing af.https://t.co/OG4ZF66ZyF
— Holly Figueroa O'Reilly 🌸 (@AynRandPaulRyan) January 16, 2018
Hard same. https://t.co/jiFX68Xmxz
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) January 16, 2018
I was gonna say "we all do stuff like this," but yikes not to this degree. He commits to the full thing. https://t.co/EHbY6pQzxB
— Philly M. Nerd (@PhillyMovieNerd) January 16, 2018
Sen Orrin Hatch removes invisible glasses… I need me some of those. pic.twitter.com/MOMVKrhvJJ
— FC (@FraserDColeman) January 16, 2018
What if we're all wearing glasses and Orrin Hatch is the only one who can see them? https://t.co/lwXjjFVyJ8
— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) January 16, 2018
Whoa. Senator @senorrinhatch Orrin Hatch has got those magical #HarryPotter invisible glasses. Here he’s caught removing them. Ht @LevineJonathan pic.twitter.com/AkcnsriOi6
— 🚶🏻Curtis S. Chin (@CurtisSChin) January 16, 2018
You could take UCB classes for decades and never get this good at object work. https://t.co/cTZ1AgDfPT
— Tim Duffy™ (@TimDuffy) January 16, 2018
https://twitter.com/edbott/status/953325874807320577
.@OrrinHatch we got you, dude pic.twitter.com/ymMhRuiiOS
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 16, 2018
FAKE NEWS: Orrin Hatch was clearly wearing glasses all along pic.twitter.com/RxgGwX7HlN
— Esquire (@esquire) January 16, 2018
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) January 16, 2018
Even the official Twitter account for Hatch’s office got in on the act, responding to Levine’s original tweet with a Photoshop of the senator’s “invisible glasses from Warby Parker.”
Oh you mean his invisible glasses from Warby Parker? They're new, you've probably never heard of them. pic.twitter.com/pygTRwbJl7
— Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) January 16, 2018