Dianne Feinstein Appears Unaware She Just Missed Three Months of Senate Business: ‘I’ve Been Here. I’ve Been Voting’

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) insisted to a reporter on Tuesday that she’s been in the Senate and voting despite a three-month absence from Washington that just ended last week.

Feinstein, 89, has cast some votes since returning, but the tenor of her latest remarks strongly indicates she believes otherwise. She was hospitalized with shingles in February, but has also faced questions for years about her mental state.

Writing in Slate, Jim Newell relayed an exchange he had with the senator on Tuesday afternoon in a piece titled, “A Brief, Concerning Conversation With Dianne Feinstein”:

I asked her how she was feeling.

“Oh, I’m feeling fine. I have a problem with the leg.” A fellow reporter staking out the elevator asked what was wrong with the leg.

“Well, nothing that’s anyone concern but mine,” she said.

When the fellow reporter asked her what the response from her colleagues had been like since her return, though, the conversation took an odd turn.

“No, I haven’t been gone,” she said.

OK.

“You should follow the—I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.”

When asked whether she meant that she’d been working from home, she turned feisty.

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she said. “Please. You either know or don’t know.”

After deflecting one final question about those, like Rep. Ro Khanna, who’ve called on her to resign, she was wheeled away.

Feinstein has faced growing calls to resign before she retires at the end of her term in January 2025. Democrats hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate, where Feinstein’s absence was felt when the Judiciary Committee was deadlocked on several of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees.

Were she to resign, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) would appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of the term.

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