September 4, the networks set the stage for the confirmation hearing “battle” brewing later Tuesday for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. All three networks hyped baseless complaints and scare tactics from Democrats on Roe v. Wade and the Mueller probe, while not offering much from Republicans to counteract their claims.
ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today rallied for Democrats from the get-go, starting off their reports by glumly acknowledging that Democrats didn’t have the numbers to deny Kavanaugh his confirmation, but hailed they were still “not giving up without a fight.”
On GMA, anchor George Stephanopoulos clung to the glimmer of hope that still Kavanaugh’s confirmation would be a bitter battle. To Chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, he asked why Republicans thought they had the votes, when their latest poll with the Washington Post showed Americans were divided on whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed:
“That’s a bit surprising given Kavanaugh’s polling,” Stephanopoulos said skeptically. Karl agreed, referring to past SCOTUS nominees who didn’t make it.
“We haven’t seen numbers this low since Harriet Miers, whose confirmation was withdrawn, and Robert Bork, whose nomination was defeated,” Karl hyped.
But what if he was confirmed? Stephanopoulos turned to ABC Supreme Court analyst Kate Shaw to tout everything that could be at risk, from the environment to abortion to voting rights. “The stakes couldn’t be higher and I think, the impact could be really dramatic,” she before warning that Senators needed to vote with their “eyes wide open to the likely impact on the law.”
GMA correspondent Terry Moran also touted Democrats’ complaints that the White House had not released every document related to Kavanaugh's time as an aide in the Bush administration, framing it as something sinister:
TERRY MORAN: This morning Democrats facing an uphill battle blocking Judge Kavanaugh's path to the Supreme Court but they won't go down without a fight blasting the White House for blocking access to 100,000 pages of documents from his time as a close aide to President George W. Bush. And overnight a document dump at the 11th hour. Chuck Schumer tweeting “the senate was just given an additional 42,000 pages of Kavanaugh documents the night before his confirmation hearing. This underscores how absurd the process is.”
ELIZABETH WARREN: It really raises the question, what is it they’re trying to hide?
However, ABC (and CBS) ignored the White House’s rebuttal to these sensational insinuations.
NBC was the only network to feature the counterpoint to the Dems argument from WH spokesperson Raj Shah, who pointed out that this wasn’t unusual, in fact the White House had released hundreds of thousands of documents already, which amounted to more documents than the amount that previous administrations had released for past five SCOTUS nominees, combined.
CBS This Morning also touted Senator Warren complaining abortion rights were “at stake.” However, CBS was the only network to balance out the Democrat scare tactics on Roe v. Wade with a conservative rebuttal. The network played a clip of the Federalist Society’s Executive Vice President Leonard Leo on CBS earlier dismissing Democrat’s fearmongering on Roe v. Wade, saying they had been bringing this up since 1982 and nothing had happened to the law.
