President Donald Trump may have stooped to a new low Tuesday night when he decided to openly mock Christine Blasey Ford and her allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during a rally in Mississippi.
And honestly, the only thing that’s surprising is that it took this long to happen. Gone are the headlines that touted the president’s “restraint,” like CNN’s, which read “Aides quietly stunned by Trump’s respectful handling of Kavanaugh accuser.” In the piece, two sources quoted Trump as saying, “Why would I attack her?”
But last night, that’s exactly what he did, going so far as to imitate Ford.
“’I had one beer.’ Well do you think it was… ‘Nope. It was one beer.’ Oh good. How did you get home? ‘I don’t remember.’ How did you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember,'” Trump said, prompting laughter from those in the crowd. “How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ What neighborhood was it in? ‘I don’t know.’ Where’s the house? ‘I don’t know. Upstairs. Downstairs. I don’t know. But I had one beer that’s the only thing I remember.'”
“And a man’s life is in tatters,” Trump continued. “A man’s life is shattered.” Then, echoing his comments from earlier in the day when he expressed fear for young men in the age of #MeToo, he claimed that he had many “false allegations” against him, adding that the crowd should “think of your son” because men are “guilty until proven innocent.”
Perhaps even more jarring than Trump’s own outrageous words is the laughter and applause of the crowd. Many social media users made the astute connection between the reactions at the rally and Ford’s poignant testimony about her memory of the alleged attack: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two,” she said of the one thing she remembers the most about that night more than 30 years ago.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)—who helped request the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh which delayed the confirmation vote—appeared on the Today show Wednesday morning and condemned Trump’s speech. “There’s no time and no place for remarks like that,” he said. “I wish he hadn’t have done it. It’s kind of appalling.”
Twitter agreed—and many wonder how this type of rhetoric will affect senators like Flake, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) who are thought to be on the fence regarding their Kavanaugh nomination votes.
As Christine Blasey Ford took her seat at a table in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today to answer questions regarding her allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, I was not working under any pretense that she would be treated fairly by the Republican senators, every one of them male and quite a few well past the age of 60. History (see: Hill, Anita) and the members’ own reluctance to allow an FBI investigation into Blasey Ford’s claims were evidence enough.
Before today’s hearings even began, Blasey Ford had been referred to as “mixed up” by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and he bookended that dismissive comment by calling her “pleasing” and an “attractive witness” after her testimony today.
As today’s proceedings went on, that low hum of condescension grew louder and louder.
To see how these Republican men conducted themselves in real-time blinded me with the kind of rage I haven’t felt since Donald Trump loomed menacingly behind Hillary Clinton during that presidential debate back in 2016. The contempt for women was, to me, on full display and indicative of a type of behavior that we see from the right too often.
From the moment Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), an 85-year-old, began his opening statement, it was clear he was irritated to be holding this hearing in the first place. The man was feeling ornery—and he was about to let everybody know it.
PHOTO: Bloomberg
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee
After apologizing to both Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh, he launched into a winding rant that blamed the Democrats and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), for how Blasey Ford’s confidential letter was handled. (For her part, Blasey Ford has said that Feinstein followed her wishes, not releasing her name and keeping the allegations from the public.)
These women, Grassley seemed to imply, had gotten in the way of a nomination that he’d planned to push through smoothly—and you could hear the anger in his voice. “I lament the way this hearing has come about,” he said. “My staff made repeated requests to interview Dr. Ford during the past eleven days, even volunteering to fly to California to take her testimony. But her attorneys refused to present her allegations to Congress. I nevertheless honored her request for a public hearing, so Dr. Ford today has the opportunity to present her allegations under oath.”
From the moment Chairman Chuck Grassley, 85, began his opening statement, it was clear he was irritated to be holding this hearing in the first place—and he was about to let everybody know it.
It was his tone as much as his words that stunned me, and that was before the interrupting started.
When Feinstein, the ranking minority member on the committee, took her allotted opening time, she used part of it to introduce Blasey Ford. “Before you get to your testimony—and the chairman chose not to do this,” she said. “I think it’s important to make sure you’re properly introduced.” But Grassley jumped in as she spoke, “I was going to introduce her. But if you want to introduce her, I’d be glad to have you do that, but I want you to know I didn’t forget to do that because I would do that just as she was about to speak.”
That was the first of many times Grassley would interject while one of the few women empowered to speak opened her mouth. It was almost as if he couldn’t help himself. Even the veteran prosecutor that GOP senators—too afraid, I think, of what it would look like to have 11 white men cross-examine an alleged sexual assault victim, whom I will remind us was not on trial—carted in to question Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh was not immune.
Grassley still interrupted her mid-question. As I wrote on Twitter, “Chuck Grassley is so frustrated he can’t ask Blasey Ford the intrusive questions himself that he has to interrupt the woman he hired to do so.” He then chastised Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who was asking to provided documents about which Blasey Ford was testifying, saying he was “rudely interrupted.”
But the dismissive attitude toward women didn’t stop there. When he granted a request from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Grassley chided, “You got what you wanted and I’d think you’d be satisfied.”
Have you started screaming into the void yet? Because I haven’t stopped since 10 a.m. And we haven’t even addressed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Since the allegations were made public, Graham has been one of the most vocal supporters of Kavanaugh. That doesn’t mean he’s kept his cool. His remarks to reporters after the first session were in sharp contrast to the measured tone that Blasey Ford used to speak when she testified. He was visibly furious. He was flippant and utterly dismissive of Blasey Ford. He said he felt “ambushed”. It was clear that he never intended to consider what she had to say. And that’s maddening.
PHOTO: Getty
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
“All I can deal with is what’s in front of me. I’ve got a guy who adamantly denies this,” he said. “Everybody who actually knows him in a real way say, ‘This is not the guy I know.” I’ve got Dr. Ford, who can’t tell me the time and the place. And we’ll see what happens. Maybe something comes out.”
And in case that wasn’t threatening enough, he continued: “To my Republican colleagues: If you can ignore everything in this record, looking at an allegation that’s 35 years old, that’s uncertain in time, place, date, and no corroboration. If that’s enough for you, god help us all as Republicans, because this happens to us, it never happens to them. But let me tell my Democratic friends: If this is the new norm, you’d better watch out for your nominees.”
Brett Kavanaugh came out swinging during the early part of his testimony. He raised his voice and was indignant. And Graham backed him up. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for!” Graham yelled. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.”
The palpable rage was mildly terrifying—and I’m sure triggering to many, many survivors. But I think this is what happens when rich, white, male privilege is threatened. The products of that privilege lash out in fear. Because if that system of protection is breaking down for one of their own, they might be in jeopardy in the future. And they don’t want to imagine that world.
Christine Blasey Ford, a professor, mother, and former childhood acquaintance of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, will testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. There, she will recount her side of the story for Senators, and the world at large, sharing in great detail the night she says Kavanaugh assaulted her.
Ford’s prepared opening remarks were released Wednesday, in which she shared just how deeply the alleged event from 1982 affected the rest of her life.
“I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school,” Ford wrote. She explained how she and Kavanaugh attended nearby schools—hers an all-girls academy and his an all-boys. Their social circles intersected. As she recounted, they weren’t quite friends but knew of one another well enough. But, in the summer of 1982 their worlds would collide, and for Ford, Kavanaugh would from then on become an ever-present figure in her memory.
“One evening that summer, after a day of swimming at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Chevy Chase/Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall,” she wrote. When Blasey Ford walked in, Kavanaugh and Judge were already visibly drunk. She had only one beer throughout the night.
When she made her way up the stairs to the second floor of the house to use the bathroom, that’s when Blasey Ford said the attack began.
“I was pushed from behind into a bedroom. I couldn’t see who pushed me. Brett and Mark came into the bedroom and locked the door behind them. There was music already playing in the bedroom. It was turned up louder by either Brettor Mark once we were in the room,” she wrote. “I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding his hips into me. I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. “
From there, she alleges that Kavanaugh attempted to take off her clothes, but had trouble due to his intoxication and the fact that she was wearing a one-piece bathing suit.
“I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming. This was what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hardfor me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me,” she said.
During the assault, she writes, Judge jumped on the bed, which made all three of them tumble over. That, Ford wrote, was the moment she escaped. From there, she ran into the bathroom and locked the door until the boys left. She then ran down the stairs and out the door. As she explained, she has thought of that event frequently as it was “seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult.”
In the remarks, Ford explained how she tried every avenue available to her to warn the committee about Kavanaugh and her allegations against him. She first called and met with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and her staff, and finally sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein promised to keep the letter confidential, but it soon leaked, prompting Ford to tell her story herself, which she did to the Washington Post earlier this month.
Her testimony, along with the answers to questioning will be heard in full on Thursday. They will also be heard alongside Kavanaugh’s own testimony. The conservative judge released his prepared remarks, which read in part, “There has been a frenzy to come up with something — anything, no matter how far-fetched or odious — that will block a vote on my nomination,” adding he unequivocally denies the claims brought by Ford.
However, she won’t be the last woman he has to answer for. Since Ford came forward, two more women have joined in with their own accusations against him. On Wednesday, Julie Swetnick, a woman who also knew Kavanaugh in high school, alleged that Kavanaugh and Judge were both present at a party where she was drugged and “gang raped.” A third accuser, Deborah Ramirez, is a former Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh’s. As she explained to The New Yorker, Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party in college and “thrust his penis in her face,” causing her to “touch it without her consent as she pushed him away.”
Still, none of these accusations against Kavanaugh will stop him from pursuing the highest court in the land. As he will tell the committee tomorrow, “The efforts to destroy my good name will not drive me out.”
*In 2015, Cecile Richards, then the president of Planned Parenthood, appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform committee and testified for close to five hours. (The showdown came after an anti-choice group recorded abortion providers in secret as the professionals discussed the sale of fetal tissue. Republicans used the videos to defend their wish to strip Planned Parenthood of the close to $450 million it receives in federal funds, none of which is used to paid for abortion services.)
In front of the congressmen, Richards explained how Planned Parenthood puts federal dollars to work, defended the organization’s research practices, and endured the endless GOP-led offensive with her usual grace and patience.*
This week, as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford prepares to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to level her accusations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Richards draws on her experience on the Hill to assure Dr. Blasey Ford of at least this one truth: You are not alone.
Dear Dr. Blasey Ford,
I can’t imagine what you’ve been through over the past two weeks. The behavior of some United States Senators who sit on the judiciary committee has underscored how brave survivors must be to weather the hostility and public shaming they too often face. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has likened your decision to come forward to a drive-by shooting and 84-year-old Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has said you must be “mixed up.”
Nevertheless, it seems, you persist. I hope you have also felt the flood of sympathy and solidarity from women and men across the country—including many of us for whom your experiences sound all too familiar. If and when you walk into that Senate hearing, you will not be alone; we’ll be with you.
In anticipation of your possible testimony, I have been reliving my own five hours before a hostile Republican-led committee that wanted to end access to Planned Parenthood.
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that the name of the game that day wasn’t fact-finding. There was no search for the truth. Instead, it was an opportunity for hostile men in Congress to grill me on everything from my salary to my competency to my memory—and overall, to humiliate and shame me. And all of this on national television.
But as unpleasant as those hours were, I had on my side two things the hostile congressmen did not.
First, the one in five women in America who have been to Planned Parenthood, who depend upon the organization for life-saving health care, gave me courage that day. I knew they were standing with me, just as millions of women and men across the country are standing with you—including the many women in America who have themselves been sexually assaulted. When you speak, you speak for all of us.
Second, and most importantly, what you have on your side is the same thing I was armed with: the truth. No amount of bullying and finger-pointing can take that away. Even if the Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate doesn’t want to hear that truth, you will tell it, and the American people will be listening and cheering you on.
And know this: After my hearing, not only did I feel better for speaking our truth to power—I couldn’t walk down the street without someone stopping me and thanking me. The same will be true for you. And though your detractors may be loud, in the end, their anger will be overwhelmed by the love and support from women everywhere.
We believe you. We are with you.
In Solidarity,
Cecile Richards
Author and former president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Reality TV star and former supermodel Janice Dickinson took the stand before a jury in Pennsylvania on Thursday on the fourth day of comedian Bill Cosby‘s retrial on three counts of aggravated indecent assault. (The first trial was declared a mistrial last summer after a jury failed to reach a verdict.)
On the stand, Dickinson described an incident in which she alleges comedian Bill Cosby raped her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982.
Dickinson, who is now 63, has spoken publicly about her allegations against Cosby in the past, saying that he drugged and raped her when she was 27 years old. According to The New York Times, Dickinson described what she remembered from that encounter to the jury, claiming that Cosby sexually assaulted her after giving her a pill that she believed to be for menstrual cramps. “He smelled like cigar and espresso and his body odor,” she described.
According to CNN, Dickinson said she passed out and woke up feeling sore. On the stand, she said she confronted Cosby and told him, “Do you want to explain what happened last night, because that wasn’t cool.” CNN reports she said in her testimony, “I wanted to hit him; I wanted to punch him in the face.”
The New York Times reports that Cosby’s defense attorney Tom Mesereau cross-examined Dickinson and asked about passages from her 2002 book, which don’t include details about the alleged assault. “You told a tale to the jury today that is completely different from the book,” he said, according to The New York Times. “You made things up to get a paycheck.”
Dickinson testified that her publishers advised her to leave the assault out for legal reasons, explaining, “You take poetic license in what you do. Today I am on a sworn Bible.”
Dickinson is one of the most high-profile women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault; 35 women previously shared stories with New York magazine in 2015. The charges in this current trial were brought by a woman named Andrea Constand, who says Cosby drugged and assaulted her in January 2004. Several media outlets have noted that unlike the first trial, the retrial has started in a post-#metoo environment, as the country reckons with widespread accusations of sexual assault in Hollywood.
On Friday, Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman delivered a searing victim impact statement at Larry Nassar’s sentencing hearing that ended with the entire courtroom applauding her powerful words. The gymnast had announced on Monday that she would not be delivering testimony at the hearing, but stated that she changed her mind after watching the impact statements from the other survivors.
“Larry, you do realize now that we, this group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time, are now a force and you are nothing?” she began. “The tables have turned, Larry, we are here, we have our voices, and we are not going anywhere. And now, Larry? It’s your turn to listen to me.”
Raisman, along with fellow Olympic gymnasts McKayla Maroney and Gabby Douglas and more than 130 other women, have accused the former USA Gymnastics doctor of sexually abusing them. In December, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison for child pornography charges. He also pleaded guilty to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct in November. Part of his plea deal, according to ESPN, ensured that all of his accusers would be able to speak out in court.
“I am here to face you Larry, so you can see I regained my strength, that I’m no longer a victim, I’m a survivor,” Raisman continued. “I am no longer that little girl you met in Australia, where you first began grooming and manipulating.”
Raisman also tore into the six-page letter Nassar sent to the judge earlier this week saying he had concerns about what hearing survivor testimony would do to his mental health. “As for your letter yesterday, you are pathetic to think that anyone would have any sympathy for you,” said the gymnast. “You think this is hard for you? Imagine how all of us feel. Imagine how it feels to be an innocent teenager in a foreign country, hearing a knock on the door, and it’s you.”
In addition to Nassar, Raisman heavily criticized “adult after adult, many in positions of authority” who allowed Nassar’s abuse to go on. She took to task USA Gymnastics, calling out president and CEO Kerry Perry by name. “Talk is cheap,” she said. “…Kerry, I’ve never met you, and I know you weren’t around for most of this. But you accepted the position of president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, and I assume by now you are well aware of the weighty responsibility you have taken on.”
“Unfortunately, you’ve taken on an organization that I feel is rotting from the inside,” Raisman continued.
Raisman concluded her powerful statement with a reference to the #MeToo movement. “My dream is that one day, everyone will know what the words “Me Too” signify,” she said, before the court erupted in applause the judge called “well-deserved.” “But they’ll be educated and able to protect themselves from predators like Larry, so that they will never, ever, ever have to say the words, ‘Me too.'”
