Brett and Christine Blasey Ford will both appear before a Senate committee next week to answer questions about the allegations they've leveled against Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanagh. In this episode, I discuss the allegations, the media's reaction, and why I think Brett should still be confirmed.
00:00:00.000Well, as it stands right now, next Monday, this coming Monday, Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Ford, will both appear before a Senate committee to talk about the allegations that Ford has leveled against Kavanaugh.
00:00:15.940I was reading the CNN article. I don't know why I was doing that, but I was reading the CNN article. If you're wondering whether or not CNN might be biased, if you're wondering about that, here's the article on CNN.com about the hearing that's scheduled for Monday.
00:00:43.140This is what it says. It will be a public reckoning of a woman's courage, a man's character, and the capacity of Washington's leaders to show that some things matter more than politics.
00:00:55.460That's the lead paragraph on this news, on this alleged news website. I mean, the news media, they get so offended, they get so personally offended when Trump constantly calls them fake news.
00:01:10.280But this is why. They're not even trying to disguise it. They're making no attempt whatsoever to disguise that they are all in on Christine Ford's side, and that's they're making no attempt to disguise it.
00:01:23.520The article goes on, an extraordinary American moment is scheduled to unfold next Monday when the accused, when the accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, California professor Christine Blasey Ford, are due to appear before Senate committee.
00:01:39.580If it goes ahead, if it goes ahead as planned, the hearing will become a human drama that will be agonizing for Ford as she reveals the most intimate, painful details of an alleged assault.
00:01:51.580It will be grueling for Kavanaugh as he defends his reputation over an incident he is adamant never took place.
00:01:57.560So, yeah, if you're worried about 30, if you're, if you were curious, but maybe, you know, if there's maybe a little bit of a bias problem in the media, then there you go.
00:02:08.880So, um, so I wanted to make a few more points about all this.
00:02:14.380First of all, you know, one of the most fallacious arguments that I've heard in regards to, uh, to the, to the Brett Kavanaugh sex abuse allegation, if you can even call it an argument, but I've heard this online and people have said this to me over and over again.
00:02:28.160Uh, they've said, you know, what if it was your daughter who said that a boy attempted to rape her?
00:02:35.320What if it was your, what if it was your daughter?
00:02:37.440How, how would you, how would you respond?
00:02:39.980Um, and I guess people are saying this to me because my position has been that I find these allegations to be extremely suspicious and dubious and, um, and unsubstantiated and uncorroborated.
00:02:52.900And so I think Brett Kavanaugh should still be confirmed and he should be confirmed.
00:03:08.160People try to frame conversations like this all the time, right?
00:03:11.500Um, they, they, they ask you to imagine how you'd respond if your children were somehow personally impacted by the issue in question.
00:03:22.900But, but first of all, that's actually exactly the wrong way to, to think about situations like this.
00:03:31.900That, that is the wrong mindset to have.
00:03:36.060Our, our objective should be to figure out the truth.
00:03:41.680That should, what we should be trying to figure out what actually happened, what is true.
00:03:46.520And that requires cool heads and objectivity.
00:03:51.140It doesn't require strong, blinding emotion, which is the, which is the mindset that the, well, imagine if it was your child, people want us to adopt, but that's wrong.
00:04:02.800Um, because yeah, if it was my, if my daughter told me this story and she told me right away, not 35 years later, um, then yeah, I would go to the boy's house and I would beat the crap out of them.
00:04:15.460Um, but that's because as a father, my anger and my emotions and my protective instinct would take over and they would completely override any rational part of my brain.
00:04:26.800So I would not, I mean, I would, I, that's how I would respond.
00:04:31.760Um, I would respond in an emotional, angry, vengeful, violent way.
00:04:39.580Um, I would respond probably in, in a rational way, but irrationality is not the answer here.
00:04:49.340So every time, every time we do this, where we say, well, imagine, imagine if you were affected by this.
00:04:54.640Imagine if you were personally involved.
00:04:57.060No, that's, that's the opposite of what you should do.
00:05:00.000The fact that we're removed from the situation, that's, that allows us to, to, to, to be objective.
00:05:32.700What if your son was on the cusp of some huge achievement and a woman came forward with no evidence and no witnesses and, um, and, and nothing else.
00:05:43.320And accused him of attempting to assault her years ago, but she doesn't know exactly when or where.
00:05:49.260What if that, what if that happened to your son?
00:05:50.880Would you assume that he's a rapist and throw him to the wolves?
00:05:56.400Or would you demand that he be treated as a, as innocent until proven guilty?
00:06:02.440I mean, how, how would you approach it then?
00:06:04.300Why are we only supposed to imagine ourselves in the position of the woman or, you know, related to the woman somehow?
00:06:12.260What about the man who is, who is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty?
00:06:15.860And also, in fact, let, let me, let me say this, that, um, because this comparison doesn't really work because the, well, you know, what if it was your daughter?
00:06:27.260That whole thing, you know, obviously in that situation, we're meant to imagine ourselves being told this by our daughter, um, right after it happened.
00:06:37.420But, if I was, if I were Christine Ford's dad, you know, right now, who must be in his 70s or 80s or whatever, and if my daughter told me that she planned to publicly accuse a prominent figure of a sexual assault that supposedly happened 35 years ago, and that she never before mentioned to me or anyone else, and that she has no evidence to prove, and no witnesses to corroborate,
00:07:05.320and she doesn't even remember all the details, like, when and, when and where it happened, in that case, you know what, I think I'd probably advise her against it.
00:07:13.420I think in that case, uh, well, it's hard for me to know exactly what I would say to my daughter, because I can't even imagine having a daughter who's, who's in her 50s.
00:07:21.300Um, but, I, I, I think there's a very good chance that I would advise her, no, I would not, I would not go forward with, with allegations like this, in this situation.
00:07:31.500Now, there are no, you know, there, there's no statute of limitations for accusations, of course, so you can accuse anyone of anything, anytime, but there's a reason why they have a statute of limitations in a court of law, because if you wait too long, and then you make your abs, accusation, there's absolutely no way to prove or disprove anything you're saying.
00:07:54.100So, the accusation can damage the person that you've accused, but he's not going to have the opportunity to vindicate himself.
00:08:02.640So, I think, uh, I think it's reasonable to expect someone, if they're going to come forward with an accusation, to do it, I don't know, within what, like, a decade?
00:08:21.800I think if 35 years have passed, and you haven't said anything by now, then I think it's reasonable to say, well, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of too late.
00:08:32.040It's too late to come forward with this.
00:08:34.500You, you had, you had 35 years to do it, and you didn't.
00:08:40.820So, to do it now, it can't accomplish anything except, except cause much chaos, hurt this guy's reputation, but that's all it can do.
00:08:52.340To come out publicly against somebody 35 years later with a vague memory, I mean, I think in most cases, it's, it's, it's not right to do that.
00:09:05.440And notice how she remembers all these details except the two that would allow him to vindicate himself and prove his innocence.
00:09:13.320Okay, so she remembers all this stuff.
00:09:15.700She doesn't remember exactly where or when, though.
00:09:19.400That seems kind of convenient to me because those are the two details that could potentially allow him to prove that he was innocent because he could say, oh, well, I was at, you know, I was, I was, I was overseas in France.
00:09:31.880I mean, we, I was on vacation with my parents in, in Canada on, on that day.
00:09:37.220Or, you know, he could, I mean, potentially he could maybe prove his, or you could, or, or on the other hand, if you had an exact day and, and location, then that would allow you to find some evidence to prove his guilt.
00:09:49.740But when somebody said, when it's, when it's, when it's, even if it's not, I mean, think even, even if it's like 10 years later, five years later, a year later, and somebody says, well, sometime within a span of like, you know, sometime with, within this large span of time, in some location in the general vicinity of this county.
00:10:13.520Um, you know, this person did this thing.
00:10:16.660Well, there's just no way, there's no way for someone, if someone said about you that between 10 and 15 years ago, in this general vicinity of this, of this particular county, you did a horrible thing.
00:10:33.460There would be absolutely no way for you to prove your innocence.
00:10:56.260I mean, at the very least, if you're going to come out 35 years later, you should have every last detail down.
00:11:01.960Starting with when and where, if you don't even have that, I, I, if you don't even have that, that I don't, I don't know how you come forward.
00:11:14.340Um, now I think, you know, liberals are saying that, um, and if you go, you know, if you, if you, if you go online or go on Twitter, uh, the, the phrase that you're going to see repeated over and over again is credibly accused.
00:11:32.460They're saying, um, that Kavanaugh has been credibly accused, which is just a real, which is just a, which is just another way of them saying that he's guilty.
00:11:40.980You know, when you say credibly accused, um, it's, it's just another way of, of, of, of straight up saying the guy's guilt, credibly accused.
00:11:48.700So it's a, it's a euphemism for guilty, but we're told that this is a credible act.
00:11:54.820This is a credible accusation, an accusation that's 35 years old.
00:11:58.320Don't know exactly when don't know exactly where both the other witnesses have denied it.
00:12:05.160I don't know if I would call that a credible accusation, but then you could say, well, if that's not a credible accusation, what is, I'm, I'm glad that you asked.
00:12:16.580Um, just that, just by way, this is not a, what about thing is not what about isn't, but just because we're throwing around terms like credible accusation, I think it could be helpful to, to look at what an actual credible accusation looks like.
00:12:30.440So for that, I go to Juanita Broderick, who, um, accused Bill Clinton, as I think everyone knows now, accused Bill Clinton of violently raping her.
00:13:18.380Uh, Broderick, this is the accusation.
00:13:21.020Broderick, then 35, first met Bill Clinton when he was 31 and the attorney general of Arkansas during a campaign stop he made at her nursing home where she worked.
00:13:30.680Um, they discussed her business and his campaign.
00:13:34.000Broderick wasn't much into politics, but she had recently started volunteering for him with a friend.
00:13:37.540And Clinton told Broderick to call his office if she was ever, ever in nearby Little Rock.
00:13:41.740A few weeks, a few weeks later, she did just that while attending a nursing seminar there.
00:13:45.880They arranged to meet one morning in the coffee shop in the hotel where the seminar was held.
00:13:50.860At the last second, Clinton called up to Broderick's room and asked if they could meet there instead, since there were reporters in the lobby below.
00:14:01.200Minutes after entering her room, he tried to kiss her, she says, biting her upper lip hard.
00:14:05.860Shocked, Broderick says, she resisted Clinton, even telling her she was not only married, but having an affair with another man, who would later become her second husband.
00:14:14.520He ignored her, she says, and pushed her on the bed and raped her.
00:14:19.180Afterward, she says, he put his sunglasses on and told her to get some ice for her swollen lip before leaving the room.
00:14:25.360There was no remorse, Broderick told me.
00:14:27.560He acted like it was an everyday occurrence.
00:14:31.700She rushed to the door and locked it, she says, afraid.
00:14:36.260Afraid that someone would come back to kill her.
00:14:39.080Two of Broderick's friends, who had also attended the nursing conference, found Broderick in tears, her lips swollen and blue.
00:14:45.920She told them what had happened, but made them swear not to tell anyone else.
00:14:49.460She was scared of retaliation, didn't think anyone would believe her, and blamed herself for allowing Clinton to come up into her room.
00:14:54.660I had never known anyone that had been raped, she told me.
00:15:00.680I could not imagine anybody that could get in that situation and not get out of it.
00:15:04.420Soon after, Broderick says, she ran into Hillary Clinton at a political rally, and Hillary shook her hand and thanked her for everything she had done for Bill.
00:15:14.040To Broderick, the gesture felt like a threat to stay silent.
00:15:17.420As Attorney General and later Governor, Bill Clinton was, quote, the main person that regulated my business and my income, Broderick said.
00:15:23.840And after she said, after she said what she did to me, I just thought, I will keep quiet.
00:15:29.360Okay, so, what makes that credible while the accusation against Kavanaugh is not as credible?
00:17:17.000So, we have exact day and time and location.
00:17:20.800We have, she reported it to two other people right after it happened.
00:17:26.140And she has an actual reason she can get for why she didn't tell anybody.
00:17:31.840And then the fourth thing, which is also really important, that this fits a pattern of behavior.
00:17:39.100There are several other women who came out and accused Bill Clinton as well.
00:17:45.440And so, we have an established pattern of behavior where it's pretty much an accepted fact that Bill Clinton is a sexual deviant scumbag.
00:17:56.140So, with all of those things taken into consideration, the evidence is overwhelming.
00:18:04.960That there's really, there's actually no reason to disbelieve Juanita Broderick.
00:18:10.760There's no rational, reasonable justification for disbelieving her.
00:18:15.100It is, the evidence is overwhelmingly in her favor.
00:18:18.780So, that unless you are a total partisan hack, you would, you would believe Juanita Broderick.
00:18:32.440Because in Juanita Broderick's case, it's, it's her word, along with all the other women that accused Bill Clinton, against Bill Clinton, who he knows is a pathological liar and sexual deviant.
00:18:44.080So, it's just, I mean, there's, again, there's no reason not to believe it.
00:18:48.780It's entirely a different case with Christine Ford and Judge Kavanaugh.