Congressman caught watching Presidents Cup during Trump impeachment hearings

We don’t blame you if you chose to tune in to the second session of the 2019 Presidents Cup last night instead of watching the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee debate articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Unless, of course, you were one of the congresspeople participating in the proceedings.

On Thursday night, as the second day of the Presidents Cup was underway in Australia, members of the House Judiciary committee were stuck at the Capitol, grinding through a contentious marathon debate. All of this was televised with a number of TV cameras. But one congressman seemed to forget his every move was being watched.

C-SPAN cameras to the back right of the room caught Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La, streaming the livestream of the Presidents Cup from a laptop on his desk.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5_uSVkpCPs/

The time on the video reads 9:00 p.m. ET, by which time all foursomes matches were on the course at Royal Melbourne. In fact, around that time the U.S. trailed in all five of the Day 2 contests, and were at risk of completely embarrassing themselves in Australia.

But the U.S. team fought back late in the night as the congressional debate was coming to an end, with the Americans salvaging 2 1/2 points from the session, which included another win by Justin Thomas and captain Tiger Woods, ending the night trailing 6 1/2 – 3 1/2.

Unsurprisingly, Congressman Richmond is getting a lot of heat today over the C-SPAN video, which spread widely across the internet. It’s not a good look, but to be fair, Thursday night’s impeachment hearings dragged on for a painful 14 hours, so it’s no wonder he needed a distraction. And there are worse things members of Congress have been caught watching on Capitol Hill.

For his part, President Trump remained focused on the proceedings all night, at least with his public statements. Trump did not comment on the Presidents Cup Thursday, which is somewhat of a surprise considering that he attended the 2017 event at Liberty National in person and regularly comments on big golf events on Twitter.

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