In the 40 minutes since President Trump’s early Wednesday evening press conference, CNN’s The Situation Room did nothing to combat the notion that the liberal media is the opposition party. All told, the assembled analysts and journalists accused Brett Kavanaugh supporters of being racist and sexist conspiracy theorists who are being spoon-fed their talking points from Fox News.
It’s appropriate that this recap began with carnival barker Jim Acosta, who reacted to the Trump presser by suggesting that it was not really “ever on the rails, as you heard numerous times during this press conference the President was not in touch with reality.”
Acosta argued that Trump “always seems to stand with the accused and not the accuser, and he really just did not want to answer these questions” as if Acosta wants people to believe someone by default who’s lacking the when and where alleged assaults occurred who also lack corroborating witnesses.
Acosta also touted his own appreciation for female journalist and how the President “doesn’t seem to get it” when it comes to the need to, well, always believe women no matter what:
But, Wolf, and just on a personal note, as I was standing in this press conference, you know, it seemed to me it was just a no-brainer for a female reporter to be able to ask the President of the United States some of these very important, critical questions, and I don’t — I think this is a moment we will see captured in time here, Wolf, in that the President of the United States just doesn’t seem to get it when it comes to this issue when he was going from male reporter to male reporter to male reporter on these things, and it just occurred to me at one point, you know, gee, perhaps a female reporter should be able to ask the President, press the President on this issue. So, yes, I think, Wolf, this is a President that seems to be caught up in this Me Too moment like a lot of, you know, Brett Kavanaugh’s defenders up on Capitol Hill want to see how it plays out tomorrow. Of course, we know the president — acknowledging here, he’s going to be watching, Wolf.
Senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin went further, arguing that, for Trump, “it’s always 1957 and he’s the head of the Rat Pack.” Toobin added that, on sexual misconduct, Trump “doesn’t buy any of it” and would tell women to “deal with it.”
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When it comes to an eventual vote on Kavanaugh, Toobin predicted that most Republican Senators will vote for him because “[t]hey are completely political cowards.” All of that drew zero pushback from host Wolf Blitzer, political director David Chalian, chief political analyst Gloria Borger, and reporters Kaitlan Collins and Nia-Malika Henderson.
But what did draw approval from the panel? It was this declaration from Toobin about Trump supporters: “Can I make a suggestion? Maybe the base is much of the United States. Maybe this country is a lot more racist and sexist than we thought. Maybe a lot of people find this allegation preposterous.”
But the portion that best encapsulated the liberal media’s virulent disdain for everything you, the NewsBusters readers, believe and care about arose when Blitzer observed that Trump “suggested that people are going to be scared to accept appointments because they will go back to their high school years, their college years and look for dirt.”
Seeing as how that’s exactly what’s happened to Brett Kavanaugh, it’s easy to see why. However, the panel was incensed with Trump for making that claim. Henderson immediately lashed out that “he minimized” these serious allegations.
While Toobin mocked it, Collins dubbed concerns on the right to be scare tactics and accused them right of doing lasting damage to any women who come forward with claims of being assaulted or raped. Meanwhile, Henderson deemed it an imagination of Fox News (emphasis mine):
TOOBIN: No one is going to want to be a Supreme Court justice anymore. It’s like to hell with that job.
KAITLAN COLLINS: But actually, that speaks to the President’s tactic here. I get it is humorous, but it speaks to the president’s tactic, that he is trying to put fear into people that if you believe that people who have accused Brett Kavanaugh, then you believe you yourself can be accused of sexual assault and that is obviously not the case. A lot much people hopefully do not sexually assault people. People who accused of sexually assaulting people, those allegation, if credible, should be looked into. But President Trump is using a tactic here because this will come down to the court of public opinion. What do the constituents of Lisa Murkowski or Lisa Collins say to them about whether or not they voted yes or no on his confirmation. If these people look at Brett Kavanangh and they say, “well, he’s been accused of sexual assault,” if they are listening to president trump saying, if he can be accused of sexual assault, so can you, that puts fear in people.
BORGER: So was I.
COLLINS: So then they are more likely — they are more likely to side with him. Exactly. President Trump was accused of sexual assault. He said, look at me, I denied those allegations, they did it for money. That is going to put a lot of doubt on sexual assault, period, which is not something that, I think, a lot of women in this country hope is the result of things like the Me Too movement. It’s so women will be believed when they make these allegations.
HENDERSON: But it does feed into conservative narrative and sort of a narrative that’s been fed by Fox News. It’s this idea that there’s a war on men and this idea that the Me Too movement has gone too far and now, at any point, any man can be susceptible to these sorts of allegations. So I think he’s feeding into that narrative as well.
CHALIAN: And mention the court of public opinion and I just — I do think it is worth noting where we are in the context of this confirmation. Kavanaugh has been losing the battle of the court of public opinion —
HENDERSON: Right. Mmmhmm.
CHALIAN: — throughout this process. The numbers have been going against him. He is one of the most unpopular nominees in the history of modern polling on Supreme Court nominees[.]
LifeNews Note: Curtis Houck writes for Newsbusters, where this column originally appeared.
