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A palate-cleansing leftover from yesterday, one too good to ignore. “Kind of an alpha move to use a Senate confirmation hearing as a way to get an apology for a tweet from years ago,” said Nate Hochman after watching.

I’d go further. Senate confirmation hearings are so relentlessly awful that I think this might be their highest use. Imagine if every nominee had to run the gauntlet of senators quizzing them on the most uncomfortable things they’ve ever tweeted.

Beth Prichard Geer was nominated by Biden to serve on the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority. She must have walked into the hearing prepared for questions about power plants and electrical grids. Nuh uh: Joni Ernst had other plans for her.

The low-key funniest part of that exchange is Ernst busting out a banner-sized insult of another woman calling her “hideous.” If it had been a less likable figure like, say, Ted Cruz, the clip would already have 10 million views and every late-night host in America would be showcasing it on their shows tonight.

Even funnier is that Ernst didn’t let it go after one round with Geer. She came back to the tweet later in her questioning:

“For the clarification, obviously, I was not calling you personally hideous, and certainly not your appearance, and again I apologize if it came across that way, I mean no disrespect,” Geer said.

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Ernst was not quick to accept that explanation, explaining how even if Geer was referring to the content of Ernst’s speech, that would be a big problem.

“Ma’am, I’ll cut you off right there. How else could this come across? The word hideous, to me, only has one meaning. And the views I expressed in my State of the Union response. And the views I expressed in my State of the Union response were personal experiences. So maybe you didn’t appreciate that I grew up on a small, rural farm in an economically disadvantaged area of Iowa. Maybe you didn’t like that my mother had to put bread bags on my shoes when I went to school. Maybe you didn’t like that, but a lot of Americans have had the same experiences that I have had. And so to call my personal views as hideous is an affront to half of America.”

Ninety percent of modern politics is performance, especially performance on social media. As such, I can think of no more fitting use of the power to advise and consent than to grind nominees’ faces in their dumbest social-media musings. Let the word go forth.

Speaking of confirmation hearings and performance, this clip is also circulating this evening. We officially have a new Supreme Court justice (or will, once Stephen Breyer leaves the bench this summer) and at least one Republican is happy about it:

Romney was one of three GOPers who voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, but truly, all credit for her ascendance to the Court rightly belongs to one Republican. Never forget.

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