While Fox News signals to Republicans to treat Christine Blasey Ford with respect and to hear out her accusations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, there’s also a clear message that the GOP should go after Democrats instead.
As we face another Anita Hill moment with Ford going public at the 11th hour to accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault (as opposed to the sexual harassment Hill alleged of then-nominee Clarence Thomas), Republicans clearly realize what a bind they’re in in this age of #MeToo. This morning, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway sent a message to the Fan in Chief and his surrogates not to go after Ford: “This woman should not be insulted and she should not be ignored,” Kelly warned.
This message was echoed on Fox’s Outnumbered show later today but with subtle hints that Democrats should be the real target.
The discussion started with cohost Melissa Francis asking guest Ari Fleischer, “If she’s brave enough to come forward and speak before the committee, isn’t that the way things should go at this point?”
Fleischer agreed. “There’s only one thing that can happen and that is she needs to have her day in court and he needs to have his. … We the American people can watch and weigh in with our senators to see if we believe or don’t believe,” he said.
It was cohost Katie Pavlich who began suggesting that Kavanaugh supporters attack Democrats. First, she disingenuously suggested that the evidence against Kavanaugh is merely Ford’s word:
PAVLICH: I just want to say yes, we are a society that takes women’s accusations seriously but we’re also a society that believes in innocence until proven guilty. And at this point, we are only basing these allegations on words that cannot be proven. She can’t prove anything, necessarily, about what happened. And Brett Kavanaugh can’t prove that it didn’t happen or that he didn’t do these things. So that’s where they are, where we are.
FACT CHECK: There's more than just Ford's word to go on. She took a polygraph test administered by an FBI agent, which found her truthful. She also produced notes from her therapist with whom she discussed the incident in 2012. Furthermore, Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend who was also involved in the attempted rape, has quite a history of misogyny and drunkenness.
More recently, Kavanaugh, who clerked for the disgraced former Judge Alex Kozinski, dubiously claimed ignorance of the sexual misconduct which caused his resignation from the bench. Yet Kozinski’s behavior was common knowledge. And there have been other indications of Kavanaugh’s untruthfulness.
Nobody pointed that out. So Pavlich went on to specifically suggest that Ford’s claims should be discounted – because Democrats.
PAVLICH: It’s very difficult to accept that this wasn’t a political calculation considering the timeline of Dianne Feinstein finding out about this in July, this woman going to The Washington Post and then this argument that Dianne Feinstein was trying to protect her identity but then released this statement last week that she has an anonymous woman who wants to come forward with these accusations –
… For [Feinstein] to come out with a public statement that she knew was going to get all the media attention, by saying, “I’m referring this letter to the FBI,” of course her identity was going to come out and if she wasn’t part of this political process, the pressure would be on ‘cause Dianne Feinstein released that statement. Finally, I want to say, Democrats who are saying this has to be delayed for an FBI investigation – the FBI received this letter from Dianne Feinstein. They looked at it and said there’s not enough evidence to go off of here, we’re gonna put it into his record with the White House and so for them to be saying there’s – we need a thorough FBI investigation, they already looked at it and come to the conclusion that it can’t necessarily be thoroughly investigated because it happened so long ago and there’s only three witnesses involved.
Francis said she thinks Americans will get a good idea of “who you believe” from watching Kavanaugh and Ford testify in a hearing.
Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery offered up more talking points for Republicans. First, she theorized that that both Kavanaugh and Ford could be telling the truth (though she didn’t explain how). Then she suggested that there would be “a backlash against Democrats” if Kavanaugh’s nomination failed to go through. To help that along, she “asked,” “Are Democrats rolling the dice that they will have the Senate majority after the midterms and that’s why they’re doing this - as a quid pro quo against the Merrick Garland nomination? And I think voters could be really upset by that.”
After Kennedy, Fleischer suggested that Kavanaugh deserves a pass on his behavior because it occurred in high school, as if it were some kind of juvenile prank and not an act of violence that traumatized Ford for decades.
FLEISCHER: There’s a bigger ethical issue I want to get to here, too. And I want to say this with a lot of sensitivity because these are sensitive issues. But high school behavior—how much in society should any of us be held liable today when we’ve lived a good life, an upstanding life by all accounts, and then something that maybe is an arguable issue took place in high school? Should that deny us chances later in life? Even for a Supreme Court job, a presidency of the United States, or you name it. How accountable are we for high school actions, when this is clearly a disputable high school action? That’s a tough issue.
Francis agreed without pointing out that sexual assault is not exactly on a par with, say, smoking pot in the boy's room while cutting math class. Nor that Kavanaugh has denied, not acknowledged and atoned, for this behavior.
Pavlich came up with some more suggested attacks on Democrats:
PAVLICH: What we’re gonna see here is that anybody who dares to question the timeline of the story, her version of events is going to be accused of attacking the witness, denying her story, not taking her seriously, when there are very legitimate questions to be asked to her.
Kennedy got in another round, too. Jabbing her finger and raising her voice, she “asked” accusingly, “The question is are you are offended ‘cause this guy is on the other side?”
As Democrat Jessica Tarlov began to respond, Francis interrupted to move on to the Trump-friendlier topic of “newly-released bombshell testimony from former FBI official Lisa Page indicating federal investigators had no evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign leading up to Robert Mueller’s appointment. What that says about bias at the FBI.”
After this show aired, the Senate announced it will hold a hearing next Monday in which Kavanaugh and Ford will testify. Watch the Foxies hint at Republican strategy to come below, from the September 17, 2018 Outnumbered.
As for Dr. Ford herself, the Republicans will very likely allow Ted Cruz to do the nasty part of the heavy lifting here – challenging her on her memory and suggesting with the most sympathetic voice that isn’t it possible that she’s confused what happened here and is maligning poor, decent Brett Kavanaugh. I expect Cruz to make various snide comments that imply that Dr. Ford was a promiscuous teen – as Right Wingers are already doing in some extremely vicious comments online today.
My instincts say that the hearings will go on for a few hours on Monday, and then the committee will go ahead with its vote, either on that day or by Wednesday of next week, and then have a rushed floor vote by the end of that week if they still intend to seat Kavanaugh by October 1st.
This could all go sideways if she can provide more detail about how she knew Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, and about how this all went down. And if Kavanaugh gets caught in a direct lie here, that could end both his nomination and his judicial career, which would not be a bad thing for this country. But I believe him to be a lot more clever than that – I think he’ll be ready to put his “Aw Shucks Soccer Dad” face on when he sits before the committee, and he’ll present mock moral outrage when any Democratic Senator asks him anything. If he plays his part as well as he’s done so far, and if the GOP Senators vote as still expected, he’ll be on the SC within the next three weeks.