This is the awkwardest stretch of silence in cable news history.
The polls are about to close in Alabama, where voters, at long last, will decide if they want to replace Jeff Sessions in the United States Senate with a credibly-accused child predator who has spent his career trafficking gleefully in every imaginable brand of bigotry, or a Democrat. I have no idea how the next few hours are going to play out. Polling a competitive Senate race in deep-red, never-competitive Alabama has proven to be an all-but-impossible task, and after 2016, even the thought of putting stock in early exit polls and/or watching the needle of that horrifying New York Timesspeedometer-style prognosticator graphic careen ominously across my laptop screen gives me hives.
What I do know, though, is regardless of how this election ends, this brief, beautiful interaction between CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Roy Moore campaign spokesman Ted Crockett should henceforth be shown on a permanent loop at the Louvre.
Moore believes that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress, explains Crockett, because the law requires that officeholder be sworn in on a Bible. Tapper, wearing his best deadpan "I can't believe I have to put up with this shit" expression, informs Crockett that that is not, in fact, the law, and that one can take their oath on many different texts (or, sometimes, on no text at all). Crockett seems genuinely baffled by this assertion: He is an elected official, he protests, and he's used a Bible three times. Exercising what can only be described as a superhuman level of patience, Tapper continued.
TAPPER: I'm sure you have! I'm sure you've picked a Bible.
CROCKETT:[slowly starts to see where this is going]
TAPPER: But the law is not that you have to swear on a Christian Bible. That is not the law.
CROCKETT:[the single longest stretch of silence in cable news history]
TAPPER: You—you don't know that?
CROCKETT:[external silence, internal screaming]
TAPPER: Alright, Ted Crockett, everyone.
The Army buddy who inexplicably chose to tell the story about Roy Moore in an underage brothel can rest easy, because the coveted title of "Least Competent Person Associated with the Roy Moore Campaign" is safe in Ted Crockett's sturdy, Bible-grasping hands.
