Comedian Laurie Kilmartin appeared on MSNBC over the weekend to fantasize about having sex with the person who leaked the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs v. Jackson opinion, which could overturn Roe v. Wade, then “joyfully” aborting the baby out of spite if it turned out the leaker was a conservative.
“Here’s my feeling about the leaker. I would like to find out who the leaker is, so I could make sweet love to that person, because that person is a hero to me. Okay?” she said on MSNBC’s “Ayman,” hosted by Ayman Mohyeldin.
“And if the leaker — a lot of people are saying it could be a conservative — if the leaker is a Republican, and if I get pregnant during our lovemaking, I will joyfully abort our fetus, and let them know,” she continued.
Mohyeldin cracked up laughing and nodded as she spoke, responding “yeah” after she called the leaker a hero. After Kilmartin finished her bizarre remarks, instead of condemning them or even looking horrified, Mohyeldin lowered his head in more apparent laughter, before simply calling the tirade “a little off-topic” with a smile still plastered on his face.
Also on the panel were Joan Walsh, a correspondent for The Nation and a former CNN and MSNBC analyst, and Maria Teresa Kumar, CEO of Voto Latino and an MSNBC contributor. Both smiled awkwardly at Kilmartin’s words.
Walsh piped up, not to condemn Kilmartin’s glorification of violence, but to suggest the leaker might be Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, and to claim that Mrs. Thomas “helped plan the insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021. (Spoiler: she did no such thing.)
“Justice Thomas is still ruling on those questions. Why is that okay but we’re obsessed with leakers?” she asked, using a manufactured controversy about the Thomases to distract from last week’s deeply concerning betrayal of confidence at the Supreme Court.
Mohyeldin took the bait and quickly pivoted to disparage Justice and Mrs. Thomas, happily allowing Kilmartin’s glorification of violence against preborn babies to slip by.
A few minutes later in the conversation, what did leave the rest of the panel in stunned silence was Kilmartin’s suggestion that “every Democratic member of Congress who’s over the age of 87 should go on a hunger strike for abortion rights, because let’s face it, they don’t have much longer anyway. You might as well go out a hero in a blaze of glory.”
“Laurie bringing the heat tonight,” Mohyeldin said awkwardly in response to that outburst, before endorsing her words by noting “that’s why we want you on the show, because we need a little levity.”
