It's easy to play clips of Republicans inveighing against confirming a successor to Antonin Scalia in an election year, and CNN's New Day was certainly doing that on Monday morning, hyping the hypocrisy. They did not acknowledge you can also play clips from the left -- including from Justice Ginsburg herself -- that show an opposing hypocrisy. CNN skipped those.
But this line was the sharpest attack on the facts: Irin Carmon, the New York magazine writer, arch-feminist CNN contributor, and author of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg fangirl book Notorious RBG -- placed behind her left shoulder on screen -- claimed it was their job "as journlalists" to rip the Republicans for hypocrisy. She added if Republicans had a sense of shame,
"We certainly would not have a Justice Brett Kavanaugh, after Christine Blasey Ford testified."
IRIN CARMON: I think as journalists, it is our job to call out hypocrisy and it is our job to look at the shifting justifications, which are frankly bunk. I mean, they made-up rules, they changed them, they moved on, they made up new rules.
As analysts, I think it’s important to note that if the politics of shame worked on Senate Republicans, calling them out for hypocrisy, then we would have a Justice Merrick Garland. We certainly would not have a Justice Brett Kavanaugh, after Christine Blasey Ford testified.
Seriously? Republicans should be ashamed to have confirmed Justice Kavanaugh in light of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony? Blasey Ford, among the weakest, least-credible witnesses in Supreme Court confirmation-hearing history?
Let's take a stroll down Blasey Ford's questionable-credibility lane, courtesy Lisa Boothe, writing at The Hill:
- Ford did "not remember how she got to the party in question, how she got home, where it was or when it was."
- "Every witness [Ford] named has denied being at the party, under penalty of felony — even her best friend, Leland Keyser. Keyser’s attorney put out a statement saying, 'Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.'”
- "She refuse[d] to turn over her therapy notes, which she has cited as evidence of the attack even though she says Kavanaugh’s name is not mentioned in them."
- "The Washington Post also reported that her notes from a 2013 individual therapy session state the event happened in her late teens, but now she is saying she was 15."
- "She said she needed another exit [to her home] because of the trauma she experienced. However, it has been reported that the door was installed years before as a separate entrance for a room they rented out to people and a marriage-counseling business."
- "Ford and her attorneys have cited her fear of flying to the Senate Judiciary Committee to delay the originally scheduled hearing. Yet she admitted under oath that she flies to the East Coast yearly and has been to Hawaii, Costa Rica and French Polynesia."
- "In a sworn affidavit, a longtime ex-boyfriend contradicted a number of the claims that Ford has made. Under penalty of felony, he testified that he witnessed her coach a friend on how to pass a polygraph examination. When asked under oath if she had ever prepared for a polygraph, she replied: 'Never.' He also wrote that she never mentioned Kavanaugh or indicated that she was afraid of flying."
If anyone should be ashamed about Blasey Ford, it is Carmon, and the Democrats who attempted to use her to smear Brett Kavanaugh as a rapist and crush his confirmation.
When Antonin Scalia died, Carmon said on MSNBC that "he's somebody whose jurisprudence certainly left out in the cold, as you say, many historically oppressed people."
CNN's absurd attempt to revive Blasey Ford's failed testimony was sponsored in part by Carvana.
