Sen. John Kennedy said Friday that White House nominee Matthew Petersen, who struggled to answer basic questions about the law during his nomination hearing on Wednesday, should be removed from consideration for a position as a US district judge.

“I’m hoping the White House will pull down Mr. Petersen,” Kennedy told Erin Burnett. “I don’t wanna see him suffer.”…

“I think he’s whip smart, probably,” Kennedy said of Petersen. “But you can’t just walk into a federal courthouse for the very first time and say ‘here I am, I think I wanna be a judge.’ It just doesn’t work that way.”