Today, Explained - Testimony (Part 1 of 2)

Episode Date: September 27, 2018

Today, Christine Blasey Ford publicly testified about her allegations that Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her in high school. (Expect an additional episode about Kavanaugh's testimony in a few hours.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The show is today explained the sponsor today is quip electric toothbrushes. They're backed by a network of over 20,000 dentists and hygienists and hundreds of thousands of happy toothbrushes. You can find out more at getquip.com slash explained g e t q u i p.com slash explained. We're covering the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings today, and we're doing it in two parts. This episode is Christine Blasey Ford's testimony, and Brett Kavanaugh's will arrive in a few hours. Thanks. My name is Christine Blasey Ford. I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. Laura McGann, politics editor at Vox. Today, the world finally heard from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. What did she say? She said, I'm credible and you should believe me.

I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. She recounted what she says is a sexual assault that she experienced when she was in high school by Brett Kavanaugh, the nominee for the Supreme Court. I don't have all the answers and I don't remember as much as I would like to, but the details about that night that bring me here today are the ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult. She opened with a statement and recounted a lot of what was said in the Washington Post. Was there anything in there that was new?

I think what was different was there's one thing to read an account in black and white, and there's another thing to hear a real person tell the story, to hear her emotion, to hear her cry, to hear her voice crack. Early in the evening, I went up a very narrow set of stairs leading from the living room to a second floor to use the restroom. When I got to the top of the stairs, I was pushed from behind into a bedroom across from the bathroom. I couldn't see who pushed me. Brett and Mark came into the bedroom and locked the door behind them. There was music playing in the bedroom. It was turned up louder by either Brett or Mark once we were in the room. I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding into me. I yelled hoping that someone

downstairs might hear me, and I tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was very inebriated and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit underneath my clothing. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling. This is what terrified me the most and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me. Both Brett and Mark were drunkenly laughing during the attack. They seemed

to be having a very good time. During this assault, Mark came over and jumped on the bed twice while Brett was on top of me and the last time that he did this we toppled over and Brett was no longer on top of me. I was able to get up and run out of the room. Directly across from the bedroom was a small bathroom. I ran inside the bathroom and locked the door. I waited until I heard Brett and Mark leave the bedroom laughing and loudly walked down the narrow stairway, pinballing off the walls on the way down. I waited, and when I did not hear them come back up the stairs, I left the bathroom, went down the same stairwell, through the living room, and left the house. So what happened after she read her initial statement? So the way typically a hearing works is the witness reads prepared testimony,

and then Democrats and Republicans take turns asking questions. Today's hearing was a little bit different. Democrats asked questions per usual, but Republicans hired an outside prosecutor from Arizona who is a sex crimes prosecutor to come and ask questions on their behalf. Why did they do that? I mean, they know that it would look bad if a panel of all white men, which is the case on the Judiciary Committee, there are no female Republicans on the panel. So they've thought it would be better to bring in a woman to ask uncomfortable questions. So that's what they did. Good morning, Dr. Ford. We haven't met. My name is Rachel Mitchell. Nice to meet you. I just wanted to tell you the first thing that struck me from your statement this morning was that you were terrified. I just wanted to let you know I'm very sorry. That's not right. This was maybe in the sort of

shadow of the Anita Hill hearings and how poorly those went back in 1991. Yeah, I mean, so midterms are five weeks away and Republicans are not interested in seeing ads of themselves harassing a woman. So they yielded their time to this prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell from Arizona. What did she ask about? The thing that became pretty weird pretty fast in this hearing was the presence of this prosecutor. She was acting like she was cross-examining Christine Ford. The questions were, on one hand, sort of banal. Thank you, Senator.

I have a blow-up here to my right of the map that was shown to you. The address that's indicated on here as belonging to your family is what all the... Showing her a map of the area where this allegedly happened, you know, and asking her, where's your house? Where is this house? Asking her about, you know, how loud was the music? Where, you know, did you hear a conversation or et cetera? And it was sort of forcing a sense of putting the witness back on her heels. But then she would get interrupted because she never developed a real flow because unlike a normal cross-examination where maybe a prosecutor gets going and sort of builds a case towards something, the prosecutor would get five minutes and then Chuck Grassley, the chairman, would have to cut her off and go to a Democrat for five minutes. Yeah, watching it gave me whiplash because you'd have really emotional questions coming from Democrats and really emotional answers from Christine Blasey Ford. And then it would go back to, you know, tell me about your airline travel habits.

Yeah, it was. It did. It was weird. She was given chances, clearly by Democrats, to talk about this alleged incident and then to explain how it affected her life. And she did. And it was really, it was hard to hear. What is the strongest memory you have? Strongest memory of the incident? Something that you cannot forget. Take whatever time you need. The laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense. And you were the object of the laughter? I was, you know, underneath one of them while the two laughed. Two friends having a really good time with one another. And then we would flip back to questions about why she sent a letter on this day and did she send a text message to the Washington Post?

On July 10th, you texted the Washington Post again, which was really the third time, is that right? Second date, third time. Correct. And you texted, been advised to contact senators or new york times haven't heard back from washington post who advised you to contact senators or the new york times it was all very sort of procedural micro questions that were designed to um question her motivations in doing this and also try to suggest that Democrats had a bigger

hand in getting her to come forward. So did this prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, achieve what she wanted to? If you're a lay person watching this, it was sort of a weird, you know, okay, these are sort of weird questions. But if you're someone who's really into political news online, or if you watch a lot of Fox News, the questions would start to make sense towards the end. She started making these sort of references to conspiracy theories that have come up in the last week. So if you are a Fox News watcher, you may have thought that the prosecutor did a great job. But if you were a layperson watching, I think it was at best confusing and at worst kind of offensive. Watching this, as you mentioned, there are lay people watching this. There are people who've been glued to the news for the couple past weeks watching this.

It felt like a moment for the American public, for international viewers. But really, this was for the Senate Judiciary Committee because Brett Kavanaugh is currently going through an approval process. Do we think anyone's votes may have changed today on that committee? So in the abstract, the whole point of this exercise is to determine whether Brett Kavanaugh is fit to serve on the Supreme Court. Right. Is he credible? I mean, unfortunately, is he a rapist? Like these are not questions, you know, you would normally probably feel like you had to ask. But here's that's where we are. But what happened today is

Republicans attempted to turn it into some type of criminal trial. They hired a prosecutor. They talked a lot about, we want evidence, we want due process. But it didn't even clear the bar of a kangaroo court because we already knew what their planned outcome would be. Mitch McConnell said two days ago that he expects Kavanaugh to be confirmed soon in the next few days. You know, did this change anyone's minds? I don't know. I do know that the biggest challenge for Democrats and for Ford was going to be to get a sense of how believable is this accuser. And the fact is, she seems very believable. I mean, probably the most substantive argument against her was maybe you have the wrong guy.

She just doesn't sound like a person who was making up having been sexually assaulted, just the way she presented her story. Dr. Ford, with what degree of certainty do you believe Brett Kavanaugh assaulted you? 100%. 100%. So does that change anyone's mind? I would hope so. If someone had jumped to a quick conclusion that she was a liar and then heard her speak, I would like to believe I live in a world where someone can be persuaded. But just the way this has played out politically, I just don't know. It felt like what happened this morning, Christine Blasey Ford's testimony, mattered to a lot of Americans. People were reportedly calling into C-SPAN and reporting stories of their own rape.

I'm a 76-year-old woman who was sexually molested in the second grade. This brings back so much pain. And I thought I was over it until I heard that such happened to someone else and it is just it is such a shame and it was a seventh grader at my school and you know on rainy days they have you march around the school because back then because they couldn't let you out and I would see him and I would get so upset and get so upset I've had a weight problem my whole life because I was so afraid that someone was going to hurt me. And I have not brought this up for years until I heard this testimony. And it is just breaking my heart. Brenda, thank you. People were sharing stories

like that online during the testimony. Apparently, someone went up to Lindsey Graham during one of the breaks and said, listen, I was raped. Here's my story. How will Christine Blasey Ford be remembered after what happened today? It's hard sometimes when you cover politics every day to be able to tell when something is one of those moments you're going to look back at in 10 years and think, wow, this was a major moment. I feel pretty confident that this is going to be a day I remember for the rest of my career. I think that this was supposed to be a job interview. It was supposed to be a hearing about whether Kavanaugh should be on the Supreme Court, but it turned into something so much more.

Kind of in this moment of Me Too, as women are feeling emboldened to tell their stories, a woman came forward and said, basically to the public, forced us to answer the question, do we believe women? And it was really hard not to believe this woman. I think that if Kavanaugh is put on the Supreme Court, that will only embolden this movement. I don't think it shuts it down. If she, you know, if she becomes the reason he doesn't, I think either way, she's a symbol of something much bigger than any one Supreme Court justice.

Apart from the assault itself, these past couple of weeks have been the hardest of my life. I've had to relive this trauma in front of the world. And I've seen my life picked apart by people on television, on Twitter, other social media, other media, and in this body who have never met me or spoken with me. I have been accused of acting out of partisan political motives. Those who say that do not know me. I am an independent person and I am no one's pawn. My motivation in coming forward was to be helpful and to provide facts about how Mr. Kavanaugh's actions have damaged my life so that you could take into a serious consideration as you make your decision about how to proceed. It is not my responsibility

to determine whether Mr. Kavanaugh deserves to sit on the Supreme Court, my responsibility is to tell you the truth. We'll have the other half of today's hearings, the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh, in a few hours. Thanks to Loramip.com slash explained in the purchasing process. And thus, maybe it takes more than a minute. Yes, I had to create a profile. But then you said you'd practice and come back with your A game. You feeling confident? No. But I have created my profile. Should I just go ahead and...

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