On Thursday, your humble author spent more than 8 hours watching a hearing that forever changed the way Supreme Court nominations will be handled going forward. Never has there been a more nakedly partisan display from a nominee than when Brett Kavanaugh testified in his opening statement that the “smear” campaign was some sort of vast left-wing conspiracy inspired by animus over the 2016 election and “revenge” for the Clintons — presumably a reference to not only Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election and to his participation in the Special Investigation into Bill Clinton 20 years ago.
One of the most disgusting moments from Thursday’s hearing was during what appeared to be almost a psychotic break from Senator Lindsey Graham, who screamed at the participants of the hearing about the manner by which he felt “ambushed” as a member of the majority party.
But perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Senator Graham would consider the hearing and the entire process to be an odious chore to be tolerated as best one can while ignoring any actual testimony. Graham clearly does not believe that anyone was sexually assaulted at all, by Brett Kavanaugh or otherwise, and unfortunately, he was representative of the vast majority of the Republican men in the room.
Consider his appearance on Fox News Thursday, when the hosts brought up the additional charge being brought against Kavanaugh by Julie Swetnick, a client of Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who made his name when he publicly humiliated Trump and his administration by proving literally everything he’s ever claimed about his high-profile client Stormy Daniels and through predictions about Michael Cohen and other key players in the ongoing Russia investigation.
When host Ainsley Earhart introduced a clip from a Showtime program from Wednesday night in which Swetnick appeared on camera as the first of Kavanaugh’s accusers to do so, Graham chuckled as the clip began to roll. Then as it concluded, the Senator from South Carolina laughed so hard that the hosts of the program had to remind him that the accusations were very serious and might in fact be true.
It’s obvious that Senator Lindsey Graham, and in fact most or all of his Republican colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, never had any intention whatsoever of considering the fact that the allegations against Kavanaugh might be real.
Featured image via screen capture
