On Thursday, Judge Andrew Napolitano handed the mob all the rope they could possibly ask for, courtesy of Fox News, saying, “All of us agree that this witness is exceptionally credible.”
No one argued with him.
Listen, I am not here to signal my own virtue. I am not David French, or Matthew Dowd, or Jake Tapper. The reason I have defended those whose politics and character disgust me has nothing to do with virtue and everything to do with self-preservation.
I have never liked Roy Moore; I have still defended him. Charlie Sheen’s mug shot should be pasted next to “degenerate” in the dictionary; I have still defended him. Woody Allen, George Takei, and Bryan Singer are moral and political illiterates; I have still defended them. And in the specific cases of Allen, Moore, and Singer, vigorously and in great detail.
You know what—I was wrong. Let me back up a bit.
It’s actually not about self-preservation, at least not anymore.
Maybe it was at first, maybe it was a hundred years ago, before “The Woke” fascists who have captured our culture and media began slapping scarlet letters on free thinkers; before we became a country where panel after panel on MSNBC and CNN would condemn Atticus Finch for not believing the woman, before Twitter and Facebook would “unperson” Winston Smith over a joke.
Maybe a hundred years ago I believed that if I didn’t join the mob, I would be safe when the mob came for me, because I could say to the mob, “Hey, I’m not a part of this. I said Brian Williams deserved a second chance. I’ve never called on anyone to be fired. I oppose boycotts. I’ve defended you and you and even you.”
How so very naive….
Nope. it is no longer about self-preservation. And again, it not about virtue or principle or pride. It is now only about thing: when the mob comes for me, at the very least, I can comfort myself in the knowledge I am not reaping what I sowed.
And that’s why I waited a week before making any kind of comment about the allegations Christine Blasey Ford leveled against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and that’s why I listened to her full testimony before commenting on that—which brings me to Fox News.
Watch this crap…
No, no… Wait. Before you watch that crap, let me set the scene…
The Fox News clip below is from Thursday—not Thursday evening after both Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh had their full say, not even Thursday afternoon after Dr. Ford completed her full testimony. No, this is the very first break in her testimony, early in her testimony, very early in her testimony, a mere 15 minutes into her testimony…
And what is on the line here? Forget about the politics or the future of the Supreme Court. … Forget about all of that, because there is something much bigger at stake here: a man, an individual—his name, his reputation, his future, his place in history, his guilt or his innocence, and the way his own children will remember him.
There is no smaller or more vulnerable minority than The Individual, and in a decent country populated with decent people, nothing should be more important than that; than the right of that one man or that one woman to enjoy, among other things, the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise—most especially in the court of public opinion.
And with all that in mind…
Watch this crap:
Your ears are not lying to you. A mere 15 minutes into an all-day event, Chris Wallace, a man who poses as a journalist, the man who hosts one of the oh-so venerated Sunday shows, actually said:
[Ford’s testimony] is extremely emotional, extremely raw, and extremely credible. No could listen to her deliver those words and talk about the assault and the impact it had had on her life and not have your heart go out to her. … This is a disaster for the Republicans.
Later, Woke Wallace dropped this non sequitur of a virtue signal:
Over the course of this week, like I think a lot of American families, my family ― a lot of it on email ― has been discussing this and disagreeing and arguing about it. And two of my daughters have told me stories that I had never heard before about things that happened to them in high school.
Later that same afternoon on NPR CNN MSNBC Fox News:
Judge Andrew Napolitano said, “I think Dr. Ford is exceptionally credible.”
Way to judge, Judge.
Karl Rove described Ford as “credible,” without any pushback.
We expect this kind of shrill, thoughtless, dive bombing from a CNN or MSNBC. In fact, were I to turn on either of those networks to find anything close to moral decency, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. But here is Fox News—Fox FREAKIN’ News—fashionably proclaiming uncorroborated and unsubstantiated testimony from a woman accusing a fellow human being of an attempted sexual assault—not just as credible, but as “extremely credible” and “exceptionally credible.”
And again, forget the politics, and think only of this: for just a moment pretend you are this man, a man with a wife, parents, friends, daughters—and without a shred of evidence, without even having heard all of her testimony, without having heard the rebuttal testimony, Fox News is telling them the sexual assault allegations against you are “extremely credible.”
This is monstrous behavior, unforgivable, un-American—the stuff of lynch mobs, of quislings—and it is the fakest of fake news.
By any standard of truth, fairness, classical liberalism, evidence, and facts, Dr. Ford is not only not credible, she is nothing close to credible.
Let me count the ways…
- She has aligned herself with the far-left.
- She straight-up lied about being afraid to fly.
- She said she wanted anonymity but continually reached out to the far-left Washington Post.
- Her polygraph is a farce.
- Her story has been carefully weaved into a Kafka-esque nightmare no man (even with detailed calendars) can ever escape from.
- Every single one of her witnesses refutes her story — has no memory of the gathering in question or says it doesn’t happen, and this includes a lifelong friend.
- Her team was so desperate to have The Woman Who Wants Anonymity to testify publicly, they turned down the opportunity to have her questioned in private at her home in California — and then lied about it.
- Ford’s therapist’s notes from 2012 also refute here tale, even as the media and Democrats try to gaslight us into believing the opposite. Ford originally claimed four boys tried to rape her when she was in her late teens in the mid-eighties. Now she says it was one rapist and one bystander when she was 15 in the early eighties.
- Ford refused to give her therapist’s notes to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- In the statement she wrote out in her farce of a polygraph test, Ford crossed out “early 80’s” so it would only read “80’s.”
- Ford told the Committee the “primary impact” of the event occurred during the “four years after” it happened. She goes on to say, “I struggled academically. I struggled very much in Chapel Hill and in College. When I was 17 I went off to college, I had a very hard time.” Note how she skips over two whole years, her junior and senior years in high school; the two school years directly after the attack (unless it did indeed happen in her late teens).
- To later confirm the event did in fact happen in 1982, Ford told the Committee she was able to pin it down to 1982 because she remembered she did not yet have her drivers’ license. But… she also says she doesn’t remember how she got to or from the house party, so how does she know she didn’t drive herself?
- Ford also used Mark Judge’s Safeway job to confirm the 1982 timeline. She testified she saw him working there 6-8 weeks after the attack. She could not yet drive, so her mother drove her there, but for some bizarre reason Ford and her mother entered the Safeway using different doors. (And now mom can’t confirm this happened!)
- Five times during her testimony she mentioned Safeway to verify the date. How could she know such a thing unless it really happened? Well, in his memoir (which began circulating online among Kavanaugh critics in the week before Ford’s testimony) Judge helpfully reveals he was working at the “local supermarket” during the “summer before senior year.”
- In summation: On top of all four of her own witnesses refuting her allegations against Kavanaugh, so too do the notes taken by her own therapist. (Margot Cleveland’s tweet thread was indispensable for much of this — you will want to read it all.)
Dr. Ford’s allegations are not only not credible — they are ludicrous, a joke…
Even what she does remember is so full of holes you could bounce Brian Stelter through it:
- She didn’t hear two very drunk and belligerent boys sneak up on her?
- Why was music already on in a room no one was using?
- Wouldn’t blasting music ensure someone came upstairs to see what was going on, especially whoever’s house it was? This is completely counter-intuitive to criminal behavior.
- After she locked herself in the bathroom, her rapists didn’t try to get at her? Didn’t jiggle the doorknob? Didn’t try to claim they were kidding? All tuned up for a rape, they just gave up and went downstairs laughing like nothing happened?
- She remember how many beers she had (only one), but has been wildly inconsistent on the number of people who attended this small gathering, the number of people who were in the room where the assault allegedly happened, and by extension the number of boys who tried to rape her.
- She left without telling her best friend?
- She left without WARNING her best friend there were two rapists in the house?
- No one asked why she was leaving or found it strange enough to ask her the following day why she just vanished from the party?
- She can remember how many beers she had (one) but not whose house she was in, how she got home, the date, the place, how many people were there (sometimes it’s 4, or 5 or 6), or anything solid?
- She will show the Washington Post her therapist’s note but not the Senate, which represents We the People?
No one who believes in truth can declare this nonsense credible. But beyond that, where is the instinct of human decency that makes it impossible to cruelly and publicly smear a man as having “credible” sexual assault allegation leveled against him when those allegations are the very definition of horse shit.
For God’s sake, what are these Fox News cowards basing the words “credible” on? On something as unreliable as presentation and performance… How many witnesses against the wrongly accused are credible? How about we flip the script and remember that Bill Cosby’s credible presentation and performance as America’s Dad allowed him to serial rape for 50 years.
Or does Fox News actually know just how un-credible Dr. Ford is, but rather than fight for truth, for The Individual, they prefer to surrender to the mob because that’s easier, safer, less stressful, and what you are supposed to do.
A man’s life and career and name and reputation are on the line, his accusers actions and accusations are, by any standard, equal parts deceptive, dishonest, and implausible… And there was Fox News spreading the fake news that 2 + 2 = 5.
P.S. Maybe it’s time for President Trump to step calmly away from the Fox News.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.