Breathless Terry Moran: Hearing Will 'Sweep Away' Kavanaugh and 'Rewrite History'

September 27th, 2018 4:47 PM

After Christine Blasey Ford has finished testifying Thursday afternoon, ABC News broke in with their special panel to boast that Ford’s testimony would “rewrite history” and “sweep away” Judge Kavanaugh, regardless of his own innocence or testimony.

ABC Chief Foreign Correspondent Terry Moran began with the dramatics, claiming that this whole hearing was a symbol of the “reckoning” and “cultural wave” of the #MeToo movement that would “crash down” and “sweep away” Kavanaugh, and “rewrite our history:”

[T]here has been centuries, millennia of pent up frustration ih being silenced, with being ignored of being discounted by women who have tried to tell these stories. It is a reckoning. It is not just a cultural moment it’s a cultural wave. Think about being Brett Kavanaugh who is staring up at that wave about to crash down on him, perhaps in a situation according to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford of his own making. But this is going to sweep him away and rewrite our history. It is a reckoning, as well, for history.

Moran even compared the situation to Bill Clinton and Juanita Broaddrick:

It is worth saying, I believe, that in the hallways of the senate committee, outside of that committee room Juanita Broaddrick accused President Bill Clinton of raping her, she had told five people at that time, one of whom saw her alleged injuries. She was basically ignored. She is furious as you can expect, at people who ignored her, defended the president including the last democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton. This is a reckoning not just for this moment, for Brett Kavanaugh's youth if he did this and for our country.

Former Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos chimed in to agree that supposedly today we had a different standard that we did when Bill Clinton was in office. But Moran pointed out that Democrats today are still defending Keith Ellison after the allegations made against him:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me pick up on that. We have been talking about the differences. Poor Dan. While Terry was talking our cameras got stuck. The last time that happened to me was during Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings. It just makes me think. We talk about how things have changed. How much different would the situation have turned out there if that were today?

MORAN: Think about that. I think history books are be rewritten in this moment about Bill Clinton and his presidency. One of the things we have seen in some of these cases is that people view the voices of women through a partisan lens. That is what Juanita Broaddrick happened to her. Even today, A woman named Karen Monahan, in Minnesota has accused Keith Ellison, the vice chair of the DNC whose running for attorney general in Minnesota of domestic abuse recently. A recent poll by NPR there showed that only five percent of Minnesota Democrats believe Karen Monahan. This is a learning process, I guess for people right across the board.

Cokie Roberts also surprisingly called out the hypocrisy of feminists who supported Clinton:

It is also true that women's organizations did not come out against President Clinton at the time because they thought he was on their side on particularly the issue of abortion but on other issues, as well. They have a lot of people who played hypocritical roles throughout our history in terms of where they stand on it.

Moran later on compared Kavanaugh to Clarence Thomas, but said we were now in a “different era.” Moran got one last smear on the Supreme Court nominee, calling him a “radioactive justice who would delegitimize in the eyes of millions of Americans many opinions of that Supreme Court” (clearly a reference to abortion.)

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's an open question whether or not there will be a taint on judge Kavanaugh if he is able to get through this. Once you get confirmed to that club you are part of the club, they protect their own.

MORAN: They do. There’s no question. Clarence Thomas of course was confirmed to the Supreme Court and my hunch is that several of his colleagues have different views on who was telling the truth in the Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas dispute. This, however, is a different era and one of the things I have been thinking of as I have been listening to this and Brett Kavanaugh is a dedicated federal judge. whatever he did in his youth, he has led an exemplary life as a judge, as a public official, sworn to uphold the constitution from his lens, his lights, his best lights. He is an institutionalist. Going up to the supreme court as a radioactive justice who would delegitimize in the eyes of millions of millions of Americans many opinions of that Supreme Court.