On Wednesday's New Day show, during a discussion of the sexual assault accusations against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, left-leaning CNN contributor Kirsten Powers uncharacteristically started to go off on liberal Republican contributor Margaret Hoover after the former George W. Bush administration member pointed out that there is no sign of Kavanaugh "consistently" having a past of abusing women.
Even though Hoover never said that she disbelieved accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's claims of being assaulted by Kavanaugh during a high school party, Powers was visibly annoyed and charged that she had heard Hoover "just smear this woman."
At 8:54 a.m. Eastern, as Hoover gave a sober assessment of how she believed the situation should be handled, the liberal Republican cautioned:
We're in a matter of a course correction and this #MeToo movement and time's up and women have been systemically repressed for centuries, and there is a pendulum swinging the other way in that process. I think it behooves all of us to be clear-eyed and careful as we move forward.
She soon added that "I know that he is of high integrity and character," and pointed out that he otherwise seems to have no other such history: "Brett Kavanaugh has had six FBI investigations in the course of his life. There would be some other semblance of some other degree of problem with women if this were a problem consistently in Brett Kavanaugh's past."
When Powers was given a chance to response, she began by complaining about only being allocated one minute for rebuttal, and added: "I take issue with almost everything that she just said."
At one point, as Hoover tried to jump in and interrupt, Powers snapped: "I just sat there and listened to you go on and basically just smear this woman," adding, "You just basically said you know him and he didn't do it. And that's irrelevant, and you know that it's irrelevant."
Powers managed to hear things in Hoover's commentary that were never said as the Republican-leaning Hoover took a neutral view of whether Ford was telling the truth and merely spoke of her personal knowledge of Judge Kavanaugh from her time in the White House.
