By Mollie Hemingway
Friday, May 01, 2020
Brett Kavanaugh was a very difficult Supreme Court
nominee for liberals to oppose. He had a stellar reputation, an impeccable
record, and a genial disposition. While members of the Resistance held a
protest on the steps of the Supreme Court minutes after President Trump
announced him as the pick to replace retiring Associate Justice Anthony
Kennedy, their early efforts to keep him off the bench showed little promise.
All that changed in mid-September 2018, when the
Washington Post carefully packaged and presented Christine Blasey Ford’s claim
that Kavanaugh had tried to rape her when she was in high school. The media and
Democrats immediately latched onto the accusation in a desperate attempt to
keep Kavanaugh from being confirmed.
It wasn’t
the quality of the allegation that led to this reaction. Blasey Ford had no
evidence she had ever met Kavanaugh, much less that he had tried to rape her.
She wasn’t sure about any detail related to the event other than that she had
precisely one beer and that Kavanaugh had tried to rape her.
She didn’t know how she got to the alleged event, where
it was, how she got home, or whose house it was. None of the four witnesses she
identified to reporters as having been at the event in question supported her
claim. That included her close friend Leland Keyser, who was pressured by
mutual acquaintances to change her testimony that she had no recollection of
the event in question. Kavanaugh had an army of close friends and supporters
who testified to his character throughout his adolescence and adulthood.
Nevertheless, over the next ten days, thousands of
articles were published in newspapers and online while broadcast and cable news
outlets devoted their entire schedule to covering the accusation. All hands
were on deck to legitimize the allegation, paint the accuser in the most
sympathetic light possible, downplay the many problems with her story, and
ignore exonerating information. Anybody who supported Kavanaugh, from high
school friends to sitting U.S. senators, was subjected to hostile media
treatment and accusations of being a rape apologist.
The nation watched in horror as the federal judge, a
happily married father of two young girls, was repeatedly called a rapist.
MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson called Kavanaugh “the fifth guy in the gang
rape.” That was after Michael Avenatti’s client Julie Swetnick claimed,
absurdly, that Kavanaugh was the secret leader of a serial gang rape cartel
that roamed the streets of suburban Maryland. One reporter admitted that she
was trying to spin another murky claim from a Kavanaugh classmate at Yale
specifically to show a pattern of misconduct.
It was a terrifying mob, the worst kind of feeding frenzy
many Americans had ever witnessed. Democratic senators on the Judiciary
Committee accepted each claim, no matter how outlandish. After Swetnick’s
obviously ridiculous claim, all committee Democrats called for the immediate
withdrawal of Kavanaugh’s nomination.
It all culminated with reopened hearings in which Blasey
Ford publicly accused Kavanaugh, still with no evidence, and Kavanaugh fought
to defend himself. In a lengthy opening statement, he reminded the gathered how
they had publicly opposed him from the moment of his nomination, with Schumer
saying publicly he would oppose Kavanaugh with everything he’s got. Another
senator called Kavanaugh evil and said those who supported him were “complicit
in evil.”
I understand the passions of the
moment, but I would say to those senators, your words have meaning. Millions of
Americans listen carefully to you. Given comments like those, is it any
surprise that people have been willing to do anything to make any physical
threat against my family, to send any violent e-mail to my wife, to make any
kind of allegation against me and against my friends. To blow me up and take me
down.
You sowed the wind. For decades to
come, I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.
The media and other partisans were enraged by Kavanaugh’s
remarks. “Brett Kavanaugh just got remarkably angry — and political,” opined
the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells
editorialized that Kavanaugh had given an “Angry, Partisan, Trump-Like Opening
Statement.” His successful renunciation of the charges was evidenced by his
opponents coalescing around a new talking point that he was too upset at the
false accusation he was a serial gang rapist.
The events of the last weeks have proven Kavanaugh right.
While even two years ago the media and Democrats may have gotten away with
burying the sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden, it’s not working now.
They have no one to blame but themselves.
It may have seemed necessary to play around with false
accusations of serial gang rape to stop a nominee from securing a place on the
Supreme Court — or to make sure the justice would always have an “asterisk”
next to his name on any abortion decision, as Blasey Ford’s attorney admitted
was her client’s goal. But the move has unbelievably serious consequences.
Remember that Biden himself joined the pile-on against
Kavanaugh. As Marc
Thiessen reminds readers:
Who was cheering them on the whole
time? Joe Biden. The former vice president insisted that Ford ‘should be given
the benefit of the doubt’ and declared that ‘for a woman to come forward in the
glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the
presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real,
whether or not she forgets facts.’ He called, through a spokesperson, for
‘thorough and nonpartisan effort to get to the truth, wherever it leads.’ He
hailed her testimony as ‘courageous, credible and powerful.’ He even explained
away her lack of corroborating witnesses, declaring ‘if, God forbid, you walked
out and somebody patted you in the rear end, your boss, or said something to
you, how many of you would go report it?’
If the media and Democrats thought that they could get
away with their despicable behavior with Kavanaugh and then turn around and
attempt to bury a sexual assault allegation against Biden, they were sorely
mistaken.
Since the media and Democrats don’t have consistent
standards for how they deal with accusations of sexual assault, they are facing
consequences. It’s an incredibly low bar, but there is no question that Tara
Reade’s claim against Biden is significantly stronger than Blasey Ford’s claim
against Kavanaugh.
For instance, Reade has evidence she met Biden. No one
disputes she worked for him in 1993. Further, she has incredibly strong
evidence that she told multiple people that Biden assaulted her at the time she
claimed it happened. Her own mother called into CNN’s Larry King show to
discuss the matter in 1993! Blasey Ford’s story changed in the recent years she
began telling it, but was not told for several decades and not before Kavanaugh
had become a nationally known figure.
None of this is to say that Biden is guilty, but the
media and Democrats sure as hell are. They were willing to destroy a man’s life
over far weaker claims, so they in no way can excuse ignoring Reade’s claim.
Whether or not the media and Democrats want to acknowledge the growing anger
over their despicable double standards, the anger is not going away.
They sowed the wind with their treatment of Kavanaugh.
Now more than just Kavanaugh may fear that for the decades to come, the whole
country will reap the whirlwind.
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