The Press Box - Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings Reaction | The Press Box (Ep. 531)

Episode Date: September 28, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker gather for an emergency podcast to give their initial reactions to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the surrounding media coverage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly. Here's what Ringer content you should be looking out for before the end of the week. From the star of Slow Newsday, check out Kevin Clark's new video series, worst picks of the week, where he offers up the worst NFL and pop culture beds each week. This will be up every Thursday throughout the NFL season, and you can watch on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. Also, up on the site, we have two pieces on The Good Place, and Juliet Lippman is writing about the 20-year anniversary of Felicity. Check it out on the ringer.com. The Pressbox is the media podcast where you are not a lot of to be as angry as Lindsey Graham. We are Brian Curtis and David

Shoemaker of the Ringer here with an emergency edition of this podcast because David, we were both glued to the spectacle today of the hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee and testimony from Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine

Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault. So many things we want to talk about David. I think first of all, here's first impression. Okay. This was a play in two acts.

Our pal Justin Charity correctly said earlier this week that the Senate Judiciary Committee is a theater. Act one was somber, I think mostly respectful. You know,

the reaction on Twitter and elsewhere was sort of quiet. And to steal a line I heard from Ari Melbra on MSNBC before we walked in here. You know, we've talked so much these last couple of months about how do you find a respectful forum for someone who's a victim to or alleges she is a victim to come forward and tell her story. I don't want to compliment the United States Senate, but I felt that was at least halfway

there this morning. and that part of this whole spectacle was actually heartening is the right word but was actually you know you were able to watch it and say oh wow this woman is getting a chance to tell her story yes and then the second half so that was sort of the opposite wasn't it

what a bizarre I mean you know there's times when times when You know, my grasp on English fails me, but I think when the English language doesn't quite, can't quite comprehend, I mean, can't quite express what we're really thinking. And this was one of those days in which you would have used riveted for both halves of the day and meant totally different things, I think. Yeah. Dr. Ford was incredibly, I mean, it was just, I think, large, I mean, partly because of what you said, because it was a for her to be just kind of so forthright and human. And it seemed, it did seem almost unbelievably appropriate venue at times.

And then the second half came along and it was something completely different. Yeah. And I think the reason the morning session was like that was an accident almost of the way, you know, we talked about earlier. this week that Republicans, it seems so unrestrained in talking about Ford, whether it was Orrin Hatch, whether it was the president himself, what they wound up doing is seeding their questions to this prosecutor from Maricopa County in Arizona, Sarah Mitchell. And so what you had was, first of all, she would talk in five-minute increments and really never built to any sort of dramatic moments at all because she was asking very small,

bore questions and doing them in such a contained period of time, after which you'd go to a Democrat who was essentially saying, thanking Dr. Ford and bringing out, emphasizing moments of her testimony. Sure. But so that was, that was, I think, the biggest part of it, right, was that, you know, Republicans had decided essentially to sit it out. So, you know, and as some people pointed out on Twitter, Mitchell is a prosecutor. So she's almost more comfortable questioning people like Brett Kavanaugh, someone who's accused of these kinds of things. And instead, she was asking these small questions. She never really dealt with the incident itself, the attack itself. She was sort of pressing on details like, you know, how did you get to the party?

How did you get home? Parts of the story that Ford said she couldn't remember. But, you know, it was all done in this very kind of small, bore tone. And I think we saw on Twitter, both the first break and then after her testimony, that there was a lot of panic within the White House and within GOP circles. That one, she was incredibly credible. Her testimony was incredibly credible. And two, that, you know, people like Donald Trump who were saying things like, you know, I didn't realize how credible this woman was going to be. We've got a big political problem here.

Mm-hmm. The political problem is real, but I think that under, that goes back to the reason why the platform was so sort of functional today. I mean, the Republican, the Republicans who are running the show in there were operating out of a position of, I think, abject fear, you know? I mean, I think that that's right. And I think that that's, and I think that, you know, that's why they, they had someone speaking for them. And I think that there, you know, I mean, if, I, I, I theorize that they, that, you know, the idea. And I thought it was pretty effective, despite how compelling Dr. Ford was, it was, you know, it was just to sort of, to split it up into these five-minute chunks and to sort, and even without

anyone interrogating her in any kind of serious way, maybe that it would just come off as just so piecemeal so variegated that it wouldn't really amount to much one way or the other. And then Kavanaugh comes out with just this broadside. And that's all that anybody remembers, right? I mean, that would have been, I guess, the game plan. But they're operating out of this fear for the first half of the day. And again, not to get on too high and mighty about it, but, you know, I mean, if only our politicians always operated out of it from a sense of fear of what their constituencies might think,

and maybe we would have more functional moments like the first half of today. Yeah, well, it's an unique situation, right? Because it's not only, the accusations are not only disgusting and explosive, but we're 40-odd days until the midterms. So it's this unique. And we're at a very, and we're at a moment

that regardless of whether or not anybody knows what to do, in the Me Too era, there is not a political consultant that can speak with any sort of like old war stories about how a politician should be dealing with any of this right now. now. Right? There's nobody, nobody can whisper in their ear and tell them what they do and what to do. And so I think that they're all just very concerned. I mean, they're scared, right? I mean, they don't, they don't, they, they don't want to say the thing that makes that will make them unelectable without, without even realizing it's happening. Yeah. I heard, I heard so many predictions today. I was watching mostly in NBC, uh, which had a pretty good lineup of Savannah Guthrie and Lester Holt and Chuck Todd and Megan Kelly and Andrea Mitchell. And, you know, I love when we. we get into confident prediction territory because everything has just basically everything we've said over the last couple of years have been wrong.

And Chuck Todd makes this persuasive case saying, well, you know, I think it's almost like you lose if you win here, right? This is sort of becoming the conventional wisdom about this, that if somehow after today's events, Kavanaugh wins a very narrow vote and gets on the Supreme Court that Democrats are going to be even more energized in November. and to go to the polls. But if Democrats succeed in thwarting the nomination or delaying the nomination somehow past the midterms, that Republicans are now going to have this burning issue and they'll be more energized in an off-year election when they shouldn't be. But I'm just like, do we really, do we know this? Do we think?

No. Do we know anything? You can talk yourself in the circles about this over and over again, right? I mean, it's a never-ending spiral of, I mean, listen. I don't even know if we fully touched on this earlier this week the last time we talked, but there's a part of this Kavanaugh thing that certainly goes to, like the only way that you can explain, not the only way, one of the only ways you can explain sticking with Kavanaugh so intensely,

intently is this concept of winning, right? I think it was either Steve Bannon or an anonymous source that was believed to be Steve Bannon said to somebody this week that if Kavanaugh is not elected, even though they'll get whoever they put up next, that sort of, Trump's base perceives his presidency to be a series of wins, despite no matter how the rest of everyone else sees it. And that will be a loss that cannot be spun any other way.

So there's this feeling that like, you know, certainly if you really believe that Kavanaugh is an innocent man, then you would want to stick with him and you wouldn't want to ruin his life in such a way as to put him up in this position to get taken down and then abandon him, right? but just from a purely political perspective, you know, when these things start coming out,

maybe you do softly, just slow it down a little bit. Or maybe you do, you know, find, see who's next on the roster. Or, you know, maybe you really investigate him ahead of time and you don't get in this position, but whatever. But I do think that there's this concept of like winning. And so, and that's, that doesn't even,

that wasn't even taken to account in the things that we knew that you were just listing, right? I mean, if he's, if he doesn't make it, then does that make, that, that makes Republicans more energy? or does it make them less energized because all seems lost or because Trump seems ineffective or because whatever? I mean, you can say anything and make a case for it right now. I mean, this is not that there's much of a distinction between the political shows and like first take, but, you know, I mean, Stephen A. Smith could be making more sense on these, on these post-Cavanaugh hearing shows than anybody else right now.

I would love to hear what he thinks at this moment in our, in our republic. A couple other notes from the first half of this. One was this picture that was going around of the 11 male Republican senators. sort of all gazing at Dr. Ford, which is pretty incredible. Donald Trump Jr.'s tweet saying, I'm no psychology professor. It was a great way to start a tweet. But it does seem weird to me that someone could have a selective fear of flying. Ford's fear of flying was one of the topics covered today.

Can't do it to testify, but for vacation, well, it's not a problem at all. And then, you know, again, I think when I think about the first half of this, though, I think what was so powerful, I saw a couple of people on Twitter saying, well, there's no new information being offered here. We didn't learn anything today. But hearing, you know, that's not what this was about, right? This was about hearing Dr. Ford's testimony and being able to judge whether, you know, being able to hear it, being able to see her, being able to see what kind of person she is the best you can judge in a short window in a very fraught environment like the Senate Judiciary Committee. but it was it was so I mean just I was so arrested watching her and even when she would get questioned by Ms. Mitchell you know she's constantly referring to her notes you could see what kind of person she was how careful you know even to confirm a date lots of times being you know very very what I would describe as non-defensive to questioning you know saying like I just don't understand what you're are you asking me this are you asking me that you know in this very kind of innocent way of like I would love to help you but I'm not quite sure what you're asking me. no moments or very few moments where she was very defensive,

where she'd like, you know, bark back at a question or even seem to be upset at being asked something. It was very, very powerful to hear her speak those words. And again, this is even from the right side of the cable news dial where we know Trump lives. Chris Wallace said it was a disaster for the Republicans on Fox. Judge Napolitano, one more. Ford is extremely credible and Rachel Mitchell is not laying a glove on her. The president cannot be happy with this. Go ahead. Yeah, but then, you know, when the more level-headed talking heads

weren't talking, they were just replaying excerpts of her fumbling at her papers and asking for time to answer questions. So, I mean, it was, you asked last week how this was immediately a partisan issue, all this whole conversation. And they were, I mean, it was nutso coming out of there. Not that it was necessarily better on the other side, but it's amazing to have watched that and to come away, you know, feeling so kind of compelled by it and then just to see that their AV department

had already started taking it, you know, dissect, already started dissecting it. Everything's content. Also, Donald Trump, I mean, there's no reason to get into like a debate of, I mean, the war of tweets with Don Trump Jr., but it's, you know, I'm pretty sure that same, armchair psychology would apply to his father's selective germophobia that he brings up only when it suits him.

So, I mean, it's kind of neither here nor there. It didn't become clear really until the second part of it because you're saying, what's the Republican line going to be here? What is the way, if they're not going to go after Dr. Ford's testimony, how do they make an argument here? And it became clear in the second half that their argument went something like this. Dr. Ford is a credible witness. We believe something happened to her. But we believe that this is a coordinated political hit job by the Democrats and that they're using Dr. Ford. And I think you saw several times in the second half today.

People say various versions of Dr. Ford is a victim of the Democrats, you know, not a victim of Brett Kavanaugh, Judge Kavanaugh. And if we say it loudly enough, then everyone's going to believe it. But that became clear because, you know, I'm saying they're watching it and you're like, this, this prosecutor isn't really casting anything into doubt. And then a couple of things she focused on were who had paid for Ford's polygraph test, the fear of flying thing I mentioned, a couple, you know, things like, you know, when specifically she came forward. There was a lot of questions about why Diane Feinstein's office hadn't brought this accusation forward sooner. There are lots of things like that. But it's a very narrow line. Like I said, it almost goes like this.

We believe this woman in the sense that something happened to her. It either wasn't Kavanaugh or there's not enough evidence to suggest it's Kavanaugh. At the same time, this is all Democratic hit job, so you should confirm Kavanaugh. That was basically the line, I think, that I picked up through this whole thing. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. I think that it was, in a sense, the first half, from the Republican point of view, it was run out the clock. You know, I mean, obviously, if they had, if they had done it in a more functional way, if you would let, even if you would let all of the Republican time go at once so that their, their one questioner could kind of go through a series of questions in a logical fashion, I think that would have only reflected better for Dr. Ford.

And I think that they knew that too. they kind of wanted to make it as as just sort of unrecapable as possible you know as unemotional as on as unspectacular as possible and I think you're right for the second half first of all so right afterwards Trump President Trump tweeted

Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him and we'll get to a lot of this stuff later but I have one line I want to focus on his testimony was powerful on us and riveting Democrats search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham an effort to delay obstruct and resist the Senate must vote. The search and destroy thing is what I want to kind of hone in on because that was a line from

Kavanaugh's opening statement that was repeated by at least one Republican senator during the course of questioning and now has been repeated by the president. Now if it was a great line that they just latched on to that's fine but I think I think this is one of those cases where you know, organic hashtags

or employing organic hashtags doesn't necessarily behoove your movement because it makes anything that makes this your side of the argument seem organized is bad. Right? And it did feel like that is a little microcosm

for the entire Republican side. Not that they shouldn't have planned ahead. We, of course, they did, but that they that it all felt very much, I said around the clock earlier, it felt very much like they were sort of boxing out the, the, the, the, the, not just Dr. Ford, but then, but, but, but the reason why we were all there and focusing it, you, they would say just that she was, she was, she was a victim too. And we were just going to focus in on process, just focus in on the legitimacy of an

FBI investigation. Uh, and, and, and, and, and if we, and if we, and if we act self, if we act self-righteous enough about our indignation about the Democrats and their search and destroy and their sneak attacks and whatever else, then that self-righteousness will propel us into a vote tomorrow or Saturday or whenever it is. And we can, and, you know, that takes us right back to where we were the last time you and I spoke, which is this sort of, you know, kabuki theater. It doesn't really matter what was said as long as we're acting like now is the time to do the next thing. Yeah, I think that's right. I would just say that, It sort of depends on who the audience is for that particular strategy for the hashtag strategy.

I think there's kind of three audiences. There's the president. There's the three or four swing votes in the Senate, which is like Corker, Collins, Murkowski, whom I'm forgetting, potentially Jeff Flake, right? Yeah. There's that. There's the president who they're trying to convince, or Kavanaugh is at least trying to convince not to just throw them aside. there's a couple of votes you need to win confirmation. And then there's the broad American public, which you may have, and these things may not be, you may not be able to attend to all these constituencies at the same time, essentially.

But yeah, I think, I think they're much, you know, and again, I think, and again, I don't want to salute the Senate. I don't want to salute grandstanding Senate Republicans especially. But I think it says something about the Me Too movement and the success of the movement that you can say they, were very, very weary of laying any kind of, you know, of pursuing any kind of attack against Ford directly. They were much, much, much more comfortable pursuing an attack against the Democrats. And this is a hit job. As Kavanaugh said in his opening statement, this is the Clinton is a revenge or the Clintons essentially for losing the 2016 election. That and, and you know what? It was craziness.

As fire up the base winning arguments go, I think, you know, if you have a bad hand right now and as some, As many people have said, you know, other presidents probably would have put aside this nominee at this point. If you have bad hands, this is all a political hit job is probably, you know, the best bad hand I think they can play right now in the media. I'm not sure what the other argument is. We're the same age. You were a little bit more, you were a little bit more invested in politics earlier. You were invested earlier than I was. did the Democrats or the Liberals of the world

by the vast right-wing conspiracy argument at the time? Was that a compelling case when the Clintons used it? Yeah, because in the same way, it is, it's all vast conspiracies are at least partly true. It was the American Spectator and the Arkansas Project guys who were going after Bill Clinton. Even if now we look back and say, Bill Clinton did a lot of bad stuff. Bill Clinton did a lot of really bad stuff and it's the same thing here. You can, and the one point say, boy,

this is a really credible advocate, you know, accusation against Judge Kavanaugh and the same time say, well, who's making, who are the people that are handling the accusation essentially? It's Diane Feinstein. That's a finance time. Yeah, I mean, and the very, the last half hour of the hearing

jumping ahead was this just sort of period of just very bizarre dissembling of like whether or not she, her, office was responsible for leaking the story after she insisted that she was trying to respect Dr. Ford's request for privacy. And then there was just great disagreement on the floor over whether or not the actual letter that she wrote to Dianne, to Senator Feinstein had been leaked. No one seemed to have the answer, which was just fantastic because, like, that the Senate

has not reached the same level of functionality that, like, any podcast has where you just yell at your producer to Google a thing, you know, and you find out within 15 seconds. seconds. They couldn't even figure that part out. Yeah. And Ryan Grimm, from the intercept, we should note, came out on Twitter, the guy who broke this, who revealed the existence of the letter and said that in fact that Feinstein's staff

had not leaked the letter. Yeah. I mean, I think that, and I, I mean, we were all there when all this started leaking, and it was just, it was a real word of mouth, we hear that she has a letter sort of thing. And, yeah, I mean, it was, but that combined with, I mean, just the process, the FBI investigation.

was a lot of today. I mean, and I already mentioned that. Lack of FBI investigation. Sure, and whether or not, and whether or not, you know, Kavanaugh was open,

I mean, I was willing to ask the FBI to continue the investigation, which he seemed just kind of hilariously unwilling to do. It's like, if you're going to just go in, just go in.

You know, I mean, I don't know why he was, I don't know. I mean, he seemed. His answer, his answer over and over again was, I'll do whatever the committee

wants to do, knowing full well, that the Republicans on the committee didn't want to consent to a more wide-ranging FBI investigation. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seemed like he was ready for the first phase, not the second phase.

Now, you said there's multiple audiences and you're right. I mean, the, you know, Trump's base or even the Republican base, I think we're really reassured by what happened today. And I think that there's again, you can, you can understand the argument. I mean, you can understand the point of view that, you know, this is maybe, this is exactly how one would act if one were accused of something they didn't do and they were, and their family was, you know, facing the consequences for it. career was at risk of being over and, you know, and all that. And, and there were, I think there were a lot of people that reacted the exact, I mean, I saw them online reacting the exact same way Trump did. We got a fighter out there. This, you know, he's, he's crushing this. He's, he's, he's every,

we love him even more now than we did before. And people, people said that Trump had was dissatisfied with his performance a couple of days ago on, with Martha McCallum on Fox News. Sure. seemed in the Trumpian worldview to be very wimpy. So here he comes out. And he's almost, we should just say this, for people who didn't watch this, he's almost yelling at the beginning of his opening statement. And then it kind of.

And then a couple of minutes later, he's crying and choking up and gulping down water. And then it's kind of like self-pitying. You know, it goes from anger, you know, I'm not going anywhere. You're not going to chase me out of this process to, you know, crack, you know, tearing up when he's talking about his daughter, one of his daughters, when he talked about his dad, he said something like, you know, to the effect of I'm never going to be able to,

I probably never be able to teach law again. I'll never be able to coach women's basketball again. It was a remarkable emotional performance, I will say. And then segueing directly into his love for beer, which went on for about 15 minutes. I like, I like beer, I still like beer,

was the quote I wrote down. The entire, my entire review of the, of his opening statement was that it was a cross between a Toby Keith song in a bar stool emergency press conference. But I mean that in the most loving way possible. But like the beer parts were, I mean, the only thing that I liked about that is that it seemed,

the yelling didn't seem, didn't strike me as like particularly human, or more human than his normal presentation. I don't know that it was like a put on, but it didn't seem like this was the moment where his human shown through, but his like, just inarticulate repetition of his love for beer did seem very human. Did seem sort of like a moment where he had, he, you know, he was not totally on cruise control.

His lack of humanity has been one of the things that's really come out in this, right? Because he is, he refuses to concede even things about high school. I, you know, even to say things like, I drank a lot, I heard bad things that happened, but of course I would never be involved in anything like that, et cetera, et cetera, right? Everything was, I was a great student. I was on the football team. I think he had a line today. I would have never have drank that much when there was football practice the next day,

which as a couple of people pointed out on Twitter, doesn't sound like any football player in the history of football. Yep. You know, I just, you know, I was always so busy. I was number one in my class, et cetera, et cetera. There was lots and lots of resume stuff today. And by the way, as a lot of people noted, this is not the.

This is not the normal appoint judicial appointee, especially Supreme Court appointee before the Senate, is not barking back at senators. And especially in this case, female senators like Amy Klobuchar, with that bit about have you ever been blackout dry? I mean, like, whoa.

That was, you know, the whole, it's funny because I think judicial temperament is one of those, one of those in normal times, things that get brought up, right? Just like presidential temperament. we'd kind of gone past that on Kavanaugh because there were so many serious issues

and that almost brought that back today that opening statement when you're like, whoa, you know, this guy seems really angry. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and his arguments were,

again, I struggle with this because you try to put yourself in his position and your best evidence isn't always the most compelling evidence. but his constant recitation of how his entire staff was women, if you're looking at it from the anti-Kavanaugh side, that's like the opposite of a positive, right? I mean, it's easy to read that both ways. And especially in 2018 when he kept saying,

I've been confirmed for court after court, subject to numerous background checks, don't you think this would have come to light by now if that were the case? I mean, listen, go through the list of every significant man who has been taken down in the past six or eight months, right? I mean, how you can construct this sentence. I've been the president of CBS for decades. Don't you think this would have come to light by now?

I've been producing movies for decades. Don't you think this would have come to light? I've been America's dad for decades. Don't you think this serial rape would have come to light by? I mean, no, this is the moment that we're in right now where people are empowered to make these accusations in public. So anyway, I mean, that's all to say, you know, it goes back to what we were saying before. He sounds like he's married.

He was an actor making a very compelling case for himself. The volume, the scale was correct. I wasn't particularly compelled by anything that he said. Do you buy the theory that he thought he was toast and he was essentially auditioning for whatever his next act is where I was a victim of the orchestrated liberal hit, as he put it, of the Clintons of all this kind of stuff and that, you know, by drawing these things out in my opening statement and clearly focusing, you know, hitting all these nice little buttons, right, that Trump plays all the time, these notes, that this I'm just setting myself up for whatever's next.

I mean, it's very, I mean, it's, it's doubly Trumpian, right? Because that was sort of, I mean, there are many who believe that that was the last several months or the entirety of Trump's campaign. Just let's set myself up for whatever comes after it. but I don't think I fully buy that. I think that that is a, that is a, and I mean, there's a way in which that explains his presentation today a little bit more believably than anything else. But I, but I still think that, I mean, he must be aware that the odds of his confirmation are still very high. And, you know, I just can't imagine that,

I can't imagine that he would have deliberately gone, you know, gone all in on just like exploding everything and planning on that, the second career. I just don't, I don't, I just can't buy the, I just can't buy the logic of it. The far more compelling theory is the audience of one. I need to show Donald Trump. Hey, I need to give Donald Trump a good reason to stand by me right now. Yeah. And I need to give, you know, I need to give Republicans broadly, if not maybe the particular swing votes. I'm not sure that was, you know, directed towards Susan Collins, right? But I need to give, you know, the masses of Republicans.

I mean, I honestly felt after the first half of today, there was a, there was a lot, there were people saying this whole week, but there was a fairly decent chance that, you know, I think it felt like this is, this is done, right? This is, he is not going to be the nominee. He's not going to be the nominee tomorrow. I think afterwards, I think by throwing as much red meat out. as he did, he gave, he at least sort of rallied the base. And we should, we, and we, we need to note, Republican senators basically dropped the prosecutor

a couple of rounds in on the second half. Yeah. And all sort of came out and made this. I wouldn't, I want to apologize to you, sir, for what you've had to endure. Well, they, so they dropped it and you, I mean, talking about conspiracy theories and talking about an audience of one, this conversation would not be complete. without discussing Lindsay Graham's, uh,

just, rabid, rabid is one way to say it. Um, take down of the, what he saw is the, you know, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, whatever, sneak attack and this one being the,

the worst moment in the history of American politics, which, you know, and no, is, we need no tweets about, about gunplay around the house in the past to,

uh, to, to, to, to, to, to, You know, I think that it's, I think it's pretty clear, for anyone that was confused watching that, I think it's pretty clear that the theory that, you know, Senator Graham's auditioning to be the next, to be the next attorney general is probably pretty valid. And his general change of heart towards Donald Trump over the past several months has been pretty conspicuous.

What a strange trip through the media he's had. Yeah. I mean, talk about a guy. It's like everybody digs up the old tweets, the guy on the straight talk express to this. My quote I wrote down from him today when he was talking to Kavanaugh was to say, would you say you've been through a job interview? Or would you say you've been through hell? Yeah. That was like, whoa.

Yeah. So he's going to, so he's, he's audited. I mean, if you had said, again, everything in Trump world is, can you imagine this two years ago? But if I had told you that Lindsey Graham would be auditioning to be the Trumpian attorney general and be more Trumpian than Jeff Sessions, that Jeff Sessions would be found wanting. And Lindsey and Lindsey Graham, now there's a guy I can trust in Trump's eyes. I don't think you would have believed that.

There's no way you would have believed that. No, I mean, and I think that, this is going to come off sounding like even more of an insult and the fuck, I guess it is. But I was a guy, like, I would be more willing to believe that Lindsey Graham would trade in his, would trade a performance like his performance today

for some vague future military. intervention than for a different job posting. You know what I mean? I guess that was the Lindsey, that's the Lindsey Graham that I thought I had, I had come to know over the years, you know. That's a down payment you figured he was making today, not to be, not merely to be Attorney General. Yeah, but I think that the Attorney General line makes a lot more sense.

And I think that, I mean, I think, I think that it's, you know, especially with the session situation, it's relatively compelling. And you know Trump will love the story of, he loves the story of bringing in former prodigal, you know, Republican. to his into the fold. I'm not sure what's in it for anybody at this point, but I guess if Trump, I guess if the Republicans don't get slaughtered in the midterms and the Russia investigation doesn't target Trump, then, you know, they do have to start thinking about the next six years. So, you know, maybe there's something. There's, that's a calculation that someone like Graham would make.

But all of that doesn't do justice to his just mad dog routine today, which was just so over the top. In some ways, it was a refreshing sort of, returned just not not particularly the politics of your but like the politics of that only existed in movies in the 70s and 80s you know just like down to the southern accent yeah yeah this sort of probably small-filled room like just jawing at each other over some incredible just perceived indiscretion sort of politics chewing scenery yeah and by the way he came ready to play today because that it didn't start in the second half when he was questioning cavanaugh it started in the hallway at i believe the first break of dr ford's testimony or the second

break. He, or maybe it was lunch, which was, I believe, the second break. He was, he was all in two reporters out in the hallway, saying he had been ambushed, again, making this very, very sort of delicate argument that she was the victim. He was actually one of the first people I heard say that today. He came with a very, very distinct agenda. In his first, and maybe we can play some of that or play some of his other speech, but in the, in his speech in the hallway, the part about her being a victim was a little bit of a

tag on at the end. He put that on. And I don't, and not, and that's not to say it wasn't a central part of his line of thinking, but, but it did feel a little bit like he was trying that part out in the hallway. Like the rest he was convicted of. And then he kind of like walked away and turned back. And he was just like, and Dr. Ford is as big a victim as anybody else, you know? And, uh, I think, oh, I think it was something like almost as big a victim, right? Or she is or vice versa, right? Um, I mean, I think that it's, I think that a lot of use of the word victim in all this. Yeah, I think a lot was lost in the timeline. And then the sequence of the present, I mean,

Kavanaugh said he said he hadn't even watched Dr. Ford's testimony, which I think, you know. In this case, they may actually be true just like functionally he was sitting in a room and it was not on. Yeah, but I think that, you know, to have him. Probably I wouldn't believe that. For him to go on second in his own defense, not really knowing that, you know, what had been said about him, I thought was, you know, was pretty, shocking and and and i think it was deliberate i mean i think that's that's his testimony is what was

intended to be left in our minds and his his his indignation is his his outrage and and uh you know when when senator kennedy you know closed things out his belief in god uh was was was i guess what would would people really people really wanted the or the republicans really wanted to leave us with a couple of stranger moments today one was the uh potential future justice as the supreme court talking about the difference between going to sleep after you've had lots of drinks? Oh my God. And blacking out after you've had lots of drinks? You're passing out.

Passing out was the larger conversation, but someone asked if he'd ever passed out, and he said, oh, I've gone to sleep. I've gone to sleep. That was a, that was, I feel, one of those bizarro world college conversations that it's just somehow is now in, is now in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Another one was the yearbook business, which we relitigated. He apologized for the whole Renade alumnus thing, arguing somewhat, I thought, or not somewhat completely unconvincingly, that this woman who went to a different school was their friend and they were merely trying to salute her friendship with a bunch of guys on the football team. And the woman, of course, had said earlier in one of the reports this week that she didn't know she was in the yearbook.

So they had done this, they had made this sort of mass gesture to her in their senior yearbook but had not bothered to tell her. More broadly, David, you and I are public school products. By the way, no, not just that, but that he, I mean, that he reacted with incredible revulsion and again, indignation. To bring her up, yeah. Yeah, he's like, look what you were doing to this fine woman. They were re-victimizing her by saying, by asking the question, is this what you implied? You and I are both public school products. Here's an important difference between public school and Georgetown prep.

You do not have like a half a page to riff in your yearbook or put quotes. Do you remember our yearbooks, David? It was a photo and our name. This is all the new world to me. I'm like, what? There wasn't even like your graduate, your senior quote that went right under your name. We had, I mean, it was a nice yearbook. We paid, you know, or $40 or $50.

whatever it was for it and it was it looked worth every penny but it was uh it was there was there was no room for messing around we got like one glossy page for you know for whatever club we were in and that was it the whole idea of a yearbook is like your precursor to your facebook page uh i just didn't as that is that is that is absolutely new to me let's talk about the media coverage a little bit because these spectacles now are we're all watching this and then we are watching other people watching this. A couple of things. One is I watched a lot of NBC.

I think NBC finally figured out what to do with Megan Kelly. Much more effective. I think I disagreed with 98% of the things she said on air today. Much more effective as like the new George Will

conservative person on the set as opposed to morning talk show host. That was a they just seemed to have solved that problem. A couple of tweets stood out to me. One was John Podoritz, who was the editor of commentary.

When Dr. Ford was testifying, she said, she referred to the term sequelae, which means, and I'm looking at the Wikipedia here, a pathological condition resulting from disease, injury, therapy, or other trauma, right? Which is I would say, he had never heard of it. So he just, he just tweeted,

Sequelie. And I just love that. The professional writer, the professional writer hasn't heard of the word and thinks it's really funny. So he tweets it. That's just, that's just such good, good material, right? No, no, no. I mean, in some ways I admire that because that's sort of insecurity is what's driven me off Twitter for the most part. So I, you know, just to be able to act really stupid in front of thousands of people and not feel bad about it, that's, there's a gift to that.

What is the art of live tweeting one of these things? Because I think that was, that is just, it always amazes me when we have those moments where everyone is truly locked in on something and you can see everyone, you can just look at them and they're going, how do I get in on this? Right. I mean, with something like this, there's plenty of genuine emotional reaction, especially to our opening statement. But there's also a lot of what, how do I, how do I get in on this public media event? Well, I mean, I was, I was particularly, I mean, interested in something like the, the conservative side.

And I'm not talking about just the MAGA side, but you and I were both, I think our conversation day started with you emailing me a Rich Lowry tweet, the editor of National Review, and went back and forth kind of looking at some stuff that he was tweeting. about and some other people, you mentioned John Podoritz, and, and, uh, I think that that was really compelling because the, the, the goal was not, I mean, the, the mission was not to, to live tweet in the way that we normally live tweet. Normally, you live tweet something in a joking way, you know, in a way, with, it's all jokes. Even if it's something you love, I watch a wrestling pay-per-view, I live tweet, I make fun of, you know, I make light of what's going to, you know, I make light of

what's going on in the ring, you do it with a football game, you do it with a basketball game, you know, your basketball tweets are all about blown plays or about somebody's, you know, new tattoo or the, you know, a shoe coming off or something. And, uh, and that, that's not possible, right? That it's not, like, even if you... At least in the first half today.

I'd say about, I would say by the time of his opening statement, Kavanaugh's opening statement, we were pretty much back in that zone. We're pretty close. Well, I think so, but there was a lot of genuine rage, but there were a lot of like Will Farrell screaming gifts and stuff like that. Yeah, but I think that you had to treat it like, I think that from the conservative side, you had to treat this like an important thing, right?

Because if you're acting, at least nominally in defense of Kavanaugh, then this is a really serious day, you know, for justice in America. I think that's, that's, so you could say that on both sides. But, you know, and then at some point, the move on the Republican side goes from just sort of,

you know, so I guess all that is to say, a lot of the conservatives that I was watching were just sort of narrating, you know, that you see the kind of tweeting that you see from really terrible

accounts during football games when someone's just like Rams got the first down you know like 45 just you're like tweets especially if you're not in the press box you're just letting us all know

just in case yeah exactly yeah it's just like you know 25 yard rush first down you know you're like please this is just so terrible I'm watching that's what a lot of it

that's what a lot of it was and then and then at some point it became responding to either liberal indignation or just general confusion and outrage and just with with with kind of straight-faced you know yes he didn't do anything wrong he's outraged because people are accusing him of things you know just kind of like semi-sardonic ants replies to other people's sarcastic or confused tweets i don't know but it is an it is a really interesting thing i think you're right in general most people were just going i mean the twitter in general was uh having a feel

day with Kavanaugh. And the line, I mean, so many of the questions were just so, just so juicy, you know, I mean, it wasn't just his, his demeanor and his, his, I keep saying presentation, but his, his tone of voice, um, all the stuff about, like you said, the Renata thing, but there was the devil's triangle, which, which the Wikipedia page was subsequently edited to include, to make it into a drinking game and not just a sex game. the concept that Boof meant fart, which is just patently untrue. Yeah.

The, you know, the squee thing. Like, all of it was just like. No, no one else, no one else, no one else, no one else remembers Boof being, uh, defined like that. No, if you had said it was a reference to the female lead and Teen Wolf, I would have given you, I would have given you partial credit, but otherwise, no. Um, yeah, the whole thing was just absolutely nuts. I mean, it was, it was, there was just so much grist for the Twitter mill. Yeah. I know we're not doing an overwork Twitter joke of the week.

That didn't mean people didn't send me them. JW pointed out to one, and this is in, I think, actually funny category. It was during his opening statement. About a million people tweeted, wow, someone tell Brett to smile more, you know, taking the thing usually used as a weapon against any woman who dares to look anything but totally happy. that was tweeted by literally everyone on Twitter, including George Dekai today. We were all, Matt Iglesias, Dana Schwartz. We were all on the same page on that one.

He was, he came. And that whole Dave Zyron, Oliver Willis, I mean, it was kind of like all of liberal Twitter united at that moment to come up with that one. I didn't watch too much, I didn't watch too much cable news. Like I said, it was, I was struck by how this was a long day of television, by the way. And there were a lot of breaks. And, you know, it was a long day of testimony. And then Chuck Grassley, who probably deserves his own segment of this podcast, would call a quick timeout. And we'd go and, you know, Chuck Todd.

I also thought it was the media coverage was interesting because, like I said earlier, they, there were different. people were reaching almost totally different conclusions at different times a day. I think, I think again, early on and Ford's testimony and even after her testimony, there was something of a consensus that this nomination was really in trouble. And it was in trouble not because of people thought it was in trouble, but because there was reporting coming out of the White House that Donald Trump was close. By the end of the day, I think, as you pointed out, there's at least as thin as it is, whether it's convincing or not, there's, there is a line that conservatives can rally around,

which is that this guy is the victim of what Clarence Thomas called a high-tech lynching. And that, you know, the point here is about, you know, standing up for the wrongfully accused. And I put that in giant air quotes, rallying against the Democrats, you know, that kind of thing. I think there's, I think, I think at the end of the day. And so you could, you could imagine more, okay, there. going to, they're going to lean on Collins and Flake and they're going to get this, they're going to get this through. Yeah.

Just a quick point of clarification from earlier. Sure. Rebecca Ballhouse from the Wall Street Journal had tweeted before Kavanaugh's testimony that he was watching, that he was watching Dr. Ford's testimony from a monitor in another room in the Senate building, which then Kavanaugh denied, I said he had not watched when he gave his testimony. and subsequently the Wall Street Journal reporter

clarified that an aide had told her that he had been watching but later admitted it to say that he was too busy working on his testimony to watch make of that what you will but yeah I think that I think that we

that you know we've all been proven wrong time and time again when it comes to when it comes to trying to count votes from you know from from desk chairs far away from Washington Capitol. But it does feel like

it does it does feel like that the I mean to me at least that I am sure that Mitch McConnell knows exactly how many votes that he has at any given moment. But it feels to me like he doesn't think he has enough. He's not sure about that. He's not sure that he has enough

to cross the threshold right now. And at least that was going into today. And I think it's a real toss-up as to whether or not today made, you know, a difference. It's hard to imagine to me that anything that happened today pushed anybody into the Kavanaugh column. But that said, I think that the Kabuki aspect of this is real. And if they go in tomorrow, you know, acting like it was a great success. And of course we're going to have this vote. And this is what all of America wants.

you know, I think that that's it. I think that there's probably a mystical, you know, political logic in that that could appeal to some of the, you know, swing votes. If you're, if you're betting on anything that happens in the United States Senate to be Kabuki theater, I think you're going to win that bet. I think you're, I think you're good to go. Yeah. I don't think it is.

It has always been such. I think it's funny because we do talk about how this, you know, is the great cliche of Trump is it's like a reality show. It's a reality show. It's kind of always been a reality show, but I think what Trump has done has made it more self-consciously a reality show. I still go back to John McCain in that last sort of dramatic thumbs down he gave to Obamacare repeal saying, watch the show telling reporters that, as if he's gotten caught up in it too. And that, you know, with Trump, you know, tweeting right afterwards and Trump, you know, sort of making sure everyone's by the dial and that he is, in fact, by the cable news dial the whole way. It just feels like it becomes even something as serious and as, you know, heart-wrenching and stomach-turning as the kinds of things we heard about today.

It becomes this, you know, must-see TV event and that everyone involved is participating in that, in a way, from Michael Avanotti and the way he teases his revelations to the president to all the way through. it's just like everyone has sort of has divergent interests but the one interest they all have is that we're all sort of watching this together and we know what time it starts we're all by the TV we're all tweeting etc etc yeah you know I mean I did have a thought today I mean this is totally this is so far afield but there was a moment about probably during the break between the two testimonies today where

I was just looking at the level of attention that this was getting online on Twitter on ringer slack and wondering just like why doesn't the NBA play a first round series at noon this year? You know, like, why don't, why don't we just totally play into this, to play into the fact that everybody's watching TV at their desk? You know, I mean, it's, it's, it was, it was such a show. Remember, remember before TV at your desk? When you would just do work?

Yeah, I don't think we were, I don't think we were old enough to remember, but almost, yeah, but yeah, when you would. Well, no, but we remember, we remember the days where you would, we remember the days where you would have to, like, minimize internet windows that didn't involve your work or somehow like... The wrestling chat room, yeah. Yeah, just find...

You had to find the right wrestling chat room that had like a white background that could pass as like a legitimate website. That's a word doc. Yeah. Oh yeah, cutting and pacing things into words so it looked legit. Yeah, and that's part of what's different now too

is that we can just all consume the stuff in real time in a way that we couldn't before. I mean, just like again, like it'd be amazing to get in the time machine just to see you know, to go and drop into an American office on the first or second day of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas and look around and be like, are anybody watching this? Are they, you know, do we go, are we all going home at 6 o'clock to watch Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw talk about this? And then read it in the newspaper the next day when it lands on your driveway. Yeah. As opposed to this, again, real time, reality show quality to it where it's like it is all happening instantly. We're all talking about it. And still, yeah, it's just that is certainly a feature of this world. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think my big takeaways from today. I mean, listen, one name that I don't think has come up in this podcast so far is Neil Gorsuch, which kind of should have been, he should have been said by many people over and over again today to an extent that he hadn't because this ridiculous line of argument that like the Democrats, that this is just some, this like broad plan to stymie any Trump nominee.

Right. So why didn't they do it to Gorsuch? Yeah. And then everything that sort of follows that argument is this sort of very, well, I mean, very, very. very Trumpian sort of like like active, I mean just recitation of this self-loathing where you just blame other people for things that you've done yourself you know or things that you're that you hate about yourself. And yeah,

it's like we're going to just forget that Gorsuch existed and then just and then basically just blame the Democrats for our own late Obama era obstruction of the Supreme Court nominee. I do think that there is a way in which again I

I hate that my mind has to go there. But some of the over, some of the emoting today from the Republican side, some of the overacting, although it was certainly in service of the Kavanaugh nomination, felt like a preamble to just total disruption if the Democrats retake power. That this was the moment in which the Democrats formally lost the trust. of the Republican side and that anything is fair game from the Republicans moving forward. So mark my words. If this happens, if that happens, I said it today.

That was a quality of today where it's like that's where you use. That's where every time everybody, this is politics and memorial. We were doing this as a search for truth and then fill in the blank party got political. Yes. And of course, all the Democrats swick saying, no, no, no, it's Merrick Garland was the moment this truly became political. You're right. This is, this is a good. It's always a winning argument.

to do that. All right, David, I think that's the press box for today. I think this is an emergency podcast has gone the full length of the podcast. Once again, we're good at this. Let's do it.

Let's see if we have any more news over the next couple of weeks. I can't imagine. All right. If you figure out what Boof means, we're going to have another emergency podcast. An etymological inquiry. All right, our producer is Jim Cunningham.

Research is Chris Almeida. Thanks, David. Back at our usual time next Tuesday for more hot takes about the media. See you then, buddy. Before we go, I just wanted to clarify. I like beer. I used to like beer.

I've always liked beer. I will continue to like beer. Let that be entered into the record without objection. See you later. Bye.