Neil Gorsuch will probably be the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States, a position in which his personal viewpoints will have an enormous impact on the laws of the country. On Tuesday, the second day of his confirmation hearing, U.S. senators grilled him with important questions, including his willingness to hold the Trump administration accountable, and this age-old dilemma: Would he rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?
Yes, Arizona Republican Jeff Flake did indeed ask Gorsuch the famous Reddit question. It’s not the first time that the strange query, which has been popular online for several years now, has been put before a high-ranking member of the government. In 2012, former President Barack Obama was asked which he’d prefer to duel during his Reddit AMA. The question received over 1,000 upvotes, though Obama didn’t answer it at the time.
The big difference between that incident and Tuesday’s prompt was that some random jabroni on Reddit asked Obama which foe he’d rather face. Gorsuch was asked by — and we can’t stress this enough — sitting U.S. Senator Jeff Flake during an official confirmation hearing.
Flake said his teenage son asked him to ask Gorsuch the horse-duck question. Gorsuch, perhaps showing a lack of decisive judgment, told Flake that he was “very rarely at a loss for words, but you got me.”
“Ha ha ha,” you might be saying. “A senator asked a possible justice the internet question!” Yes, it’s hilarious in a laugh-so-you-don’t-cry way, but consider this: Flake is one of 24 senators who introduced a bill that would allow ISPs to sell your private internet history without consent. The bill, which was introduced earlier this month, would strip FCC protections, exchanging privacy for the opportunity for corporations to make a buck off of your web browsing habits.
Anyway, the correct answer is one horse-sized duck.
