I’ve done politics for a living since 2001 and without a doubt, what was done to Brett Kavanaugh is the most grotesque thing I’ve seen since I got in the business. Here you have a man with a sterling reputation who’d already had 6 FBI background checks. At the last moment when he was about to be voted onto the Supreme Court, a string of dubious sexual allegations was launched against him.
All of these allegations were unprovable, had no witnesses willing to come forward even though there would have been multiple witnesses to each case and they were decades old from Kavanaugh’s high school and college years. All the women were liberals and had a chance to potentially cost the Republican Party a Supreme Court seat. Additionally, because of her accusations, Christine Blasey Ford made almost $850,000 from two GoFundMes and has multiple book offers. So in every case, we are talking about women with a strong motive to lie.
Yet, what did we see? Kavanaugh was presumed guilty until proven innocent and there were demands that his nomination be withdrawn. His side of the story was treated as less important than the fact that there were allegations at all. The mainstream media seemed largely uninterested in challenging the credibility of the women accusing him. In other words, we saw no real effort to get to the truth about what actually happened. Granted, there were undoubtedly plenty of people who were fine with false accusations of sexual assault and gang rape against Kavanaugh merely because they thought it was good politics for their side. That is beyond the pale. Far beyond the pale. Furthermore, that could give you the false impression that if you’re an ordinary guy who isn’t up for a Supreme Court seat, you have nothing to worry about.
However, nothing could be further from the truth because there were an awful lot of people screaming #believeallvictims and #believeallsurvivors as if an accusation alone is enough to determine if someone is a victim or a survivor. There were also legions of women openly saying that Brett Kavanaugh had to be guilty because some other man did something horrible to them. Then there were the people who seemed ready to brand Kavanaugh as a rapist because he was white, went to a prep school or was in a frat. To these people, whether he had actually done what he was accused of was secondary to the fact that they just don’t like people like him.