Media personalities, on the other hand, were struggling to accept what they had just witnessed. NBC’s Lester Holt said Kavanaugh “still seemed to be trying to find his composure and his footing as he once again continues to deny all the accusations made by Christine Blasey Ford.”13
“I mean, where do you even begin?” asked NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, criticizing Kavanaugh’s reference to the 2016 campaign and President Trump. Chuck Todd said that the speech might have played well with the president but might not play well in the rest of America. Because Rachel Mitchell was asking tough questions of Kavanaugh after her apparent gentleness with Ford, Todd concluded that Republican senators had “made that decision to protect themselves, not the nomination, which tells you what they’re really probably most concerned about, which is election day. Because this is not how you help him, this is how you help the Republicans.”14
Savannah Guthrie said, “He put it all out there, made a political argument, local argument, personal argument. How could you as a human not watch that and feel gut-wrenched.”15
Jeffrey Toobin of CNN reacted emotionally to Kavanaugh’s assertion that the smears against him were, among other things, “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.” Toobin interpreted that remark as a comment on Bill and Hillary Clinton. “This was a deeply political statement designed to appeal to Republicans,” he said.16
A reliable defender of the Clintons who had written a defensive book on President Clinton’s impeachment, Toobin misinterpreted Kavanaugh’s remark. He was talking about the Clinton supporters behind the groups that were fueling the attacks on him. Many of these people were clearly motivated in part by his participation in the independent counsel’s investigation of the 1990s. Kavanaugh did not say, or even suggest, that the Clintons were themselves orchestrating the campaign against him, even if Hillary Clinton had spoken publicly against his nomination. But the main movers in the campaign against him included Clinton aides Ricki Seidman and Brian Fallon, who were ringmasters in the anti-Kavanaugh circus. And there were Clinton aides and campaign staff at all levels of the effort. That night Fallon would ominously tweet, “Kavanaugh will not serve for life.” In the months to come, he would organize efforts to impeach Kavanaugh, harass him with ethics complaints, and get him kicked off campuses.17
The hearing reconvened with Senator Leahy’s asking Kavanaugh if he wanted Mark Judge as a witness. Kavanaugh responded by criticizing how Ford’s allegation was sprung on him at the last minute. As the senator and the judge talked over each other, Leahy’s staff hoisted pictures from Kavanaugh’s yearbook onto an easel and started confronting him with its entries and interrupting his answers. The hostile exchange was going nowhere, and eventually Grassley cut Leahy off, reminding the Democrat how polite Republicans had been to Ford.
Mitchell then asked Kavanaugh about the summer of 1982 as well as his treatment of women during his professional life and whether he had given sworn statements in response to various allegations.
When it was Senator Dick Durbin’s turn, he urged Kavanaugh to “turn to Don McGahn and tell him it’s time to get this done. An FBI investigation is the only way to answer some of these questions.” He hectored Kavanaugh, “If there is no truth to her charges, the FBI investigation will show that. Are you afraid that they might not?” Kavanaugh stopped responding, just looking at the senator as if he were disappointed in him.
Ordinarily, nominees are deferential to senators, as Kavanaugh had been in his first hearing, politely telling them he understands their concern and respects their wisdom. He wasn’t going to do that now. Kavanaugh was not going to take their belittling, mocking, and mischaracterizations without going right back at them. This time his career was on the line, his family was on the line, and his reputation was on the line. He did not know if he was going to make it through to confirmation, and he did not want to destroy his chances needlessly, but he was intentionally firm and forceful. He thought of Miguel Estrada, a qualified nominee whose confirmation was derailed by Democrats who didn’t want Republicans to place a Hispanic on a high-profile federal court. After Estrada lost his brutal confirmation fight, his wife died prematurely.
Kavanaugh was fighting not only to vindicate his judicial philosophy and the reasoning of his opinions, but also to vindicate his reputation as a man. He had endured the indignity of having to respond to the most sensitive and embarrassing questions he could imagine. He was not going to let his opponents destroy his life.
After Durbin’s questioning, Senator Lindsey Graham asked for the floor.18 No one was expecting what followed. As he began to speak, Graham’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Are you aware,” he asked the nominee, “that at 9:23 the night of July the ninth, the day you were nominated to the Supreme Court by President Trump, Senator Schumer said—twenty-three minutes after your nomination—‘I will oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination with everything I have. I hope a bipartisan majority will do the same. The stakes are simply too high for anything less’? Well, if you weren’t aware of it, you are now.
“Did you meet with Senator Dianne Feinstein on August 20?”
“I did meet with Senator Feinstein,” Kavanaugh answered.
“Did you know her staff had already recommended a lawyer to Dr. Ford?” Here the senator shifted in his chair, hunched his shoulders slightly, and pursed his lips, the first indication of his rising anger.
“I did not know that.”
“Did you know that her and her staff had this allegation for over twenty days?”
“I did not know that at the time.”
And then, turning to the Democrats arrayed to his left, Graham snarled, “If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life”—pointing at Kavanaugh—“hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020. You’ve said that!”
For the next three and a half minutes, Lindsey Graham was a volcano of indignation. With unconcealed contempt, he declared, “If you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy,” denouncing the proceedings as the “most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.” He reminded everyone that he had voted to confirm Democratic nominees Sotomayor and Kagan.
Pointing out that Christine Blasey Ford was as much a victim of the Democrats’ machinations as Kavanaugh was, Graham exposed their true aim with stunning clarity: “Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it.”
To Kavanaugh he said, “Would you say you’ve been through hell?”
“I’ve been through hell and then some,” Kavanaugh replied.
“This is not a job interview. This is hell,” Graham said. He ended with a warning to his fellow Republicans that if they voted against Kavanaugh, they would be “legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.”
The moment was electric. Kavanaugh was overwhelmed and grateful. Senator Graham had changed the entire dynamic of the day. It was powerful because he was saying what everybody outside of newsrooms and other liberal institutions was thinking but couldn’t say. The catharsis was palpable.
Noting that Kavanaugh had interacted with professional women all his life without one accusation, Graham had ridiculed the Democrats for their relentless focus on his high school yearbook. As if to prove the point, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who followed Graham, devoted his entire five minutes to parsing the adolescent text on Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook page. Obviously intending to humiliate the nominee, the senator explored the meaning of the word “boofed”—“That refers to flatulence. We were sixteen,” Kavanaugh explained—revisited the references to “Renate alumnius,” which Kavanaugh had addressed fully in his opening statement, and inquired about “devil’s triangle,” a drinking game that Kavanaugh’s opponents had hoped was a reference to some sort of ménage à trois. (In response to Whitehouse’s questions, Senate Republicans would later release the sworn statement of four of Kavanaugh’s high school friends confirming that it was a drinking game and did not “refer to any kind of sexual activity.”)19