SIO159: He's Going To Be Confirmed

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 159. Coming at you a little bit late. If you are in the Opening Arguments Facebook group, or if you're in general on my Facebook, you would have seen that we kind of did a switcheroo. Happens sometimes, but Andrew had some travel to do, so we did Opening Argument yesterday and I switched that with SIO because it's too impossible to do both in one day. It's well, it's not impossible, but it's very, it's very difficult. And I thought since the testimony by Dr. Ford and Kavanaugh was today anyway, I thought, well, this will give me a chance to watch that and react. And watch it I did, and react I will.

0:01:13 Thomas: Where to begin, well, in general I watched the whole thing. I, you know, I, I would encourage people to watch it, but it's, there's not that much to it, you know, like for as much, I mean, the ratio of how much time I just spent watching that, which was an entire day. Now, thankfully I'm on the West Coast, and I sure as hell, you know what? I think this is going to be explicit episode anyway, because it's so frustrating.

So I sure shit, I'm not waking up at 7am to watch, uh, this. So I had the benefit of being able to wake up at a time that I like to wake up and pop on YouTube and live stream it, but go back and listen at and watch it at 1.5x. So I actually finished just about exactly when it finished, it timed out perfectly, it was kind of funny, but anyway, that's all, that's all, nothing.

But that is to say, still, even so, watching most of it at one point five x, it was still an extraordinary amount of time for what happened, which was not much. Now, Dr. Ford was incredible. She was amazing. Let me go back through my notes here. I don't have a lot of notes for her because she was exactly... I tell you what, this is my main impression about Dr. Ford and about this in general. Um, I've been messaging with some people, and as Dr. Ford was testifying, certain people were very optimistic that Kavanaugh was done for, and they were also optimistic that things that, you know, things have changed, you can't have a accusation like this and and still, you know, confirm them to to the Supreme Court.

0:02:59 Thomas: And I remain pessimistic. But during Ford's testimony, it was so powerful that I was like, you know, yeah, I mean, it's going to be very difficult for him to get through. I still never underestimate Republicans' ability to not care about victims or to be the worst or to force through, do whatever the most politically expedient slash the thing that keeps them in power is. I never will underestimate Mitch McConnell in that regard ever. And as you'll see by the episode title that I think I'm pretty sure I picked as of now, I think he's going to get through. But Ford's testimony was rock solid. And here was my impression.

0:03:44 Thomas: Now, I'm not a lawyer and, you know, but I have a certain amount of experience with doing opening arguments for years twice a week with looking at things like this, looking at testimony. Again, I'm nowhere near an expert, but we've covered a lot of cases. I watch a lot of TV. I watched a lot movies. I've watched a lot of documentaries on crime. And for my experience, take this for what it is, which is not a whole lot. But for my experience in all of that, I don't know that I've ever seen a more perfect witness. I don't don't know that I've ever seen him as a person put together. Now, surely she could have happened to have more memories. She could have happen to have, you know, more testimony that would have made it more able to be verified or something.

0:04:35 Thomas: I mean, she could've had more, but it's been 36 years and don't get me wrong. This is not a fault of hers. I'm just saying in terms of strong testimony, but in terms of a person and in terms of how she presented herself and her qualities and her just ability to, when you think of the Republican conspiracy theory, which is that an operative is trying to take down Brett Kavanaugh, she couldn't be further from that unless she voted for Trump. That would be the one thing. Other than that though, rock solid person person, um, totally norm, you know, nothing along the lines that you would think she's some sort of political operative conspiring. Uh, she's a professor. She's a, uh, a psychologist.

0:05:21 Thomas: She's explaining her memory in technical terms. She's a hundred percent certain it was Kavanaugh. She, uh didn't try to do too much. You know, her testimony is incredibly believable. And from the beginning, I've already done in a whole episode on why it's believable, but just to, just to reemphasize, She didn't, you know, this wasn't a conspiracy with anyone else in the room. She only put the two people in the Room who were two people who were going to have Kavanaugh's interests in mind. And it wasn't rape. She didn't make it this violent knife point or something like that. Like, it wasn't, in my mind, it's so clearly what happened. It's so clearly just her genuinely recollecting what happened and And maybe it's not 100%.

0:06:11 Thomas: Maybe it's 93% or something in terms of, you know, because it's been a long time. Memory is fuzzy. But I did an entire Twitter thread on why I do not believe there's, I believe there is virtually no chance of mistaken identity. Talked about that a little bit last episode. I think there's virtually no change. I just do not think. And I'll talk about that in a minute. But anyway, I think she did an incredible job. It was powerful. Powerful. It was emotional and tear jerking. Uh, it was in my mind, a hundred percent believable and I completely believe her. Uh. And I also wonder even if somehow Kavanaugh doesn't get through, because I think he will, you know, it's Collins or Murkowski or whatever.

0:06:56 Thomas: We always say it's columns and Murkowsky calls Murkoski because they're the only, we, we offload all the labor of of actually being a good person to the two women in the Republican Senate. So they have all the burden on that. And that's because we just know nobody else will. We know all the men there are too shitty. And to be fair, Collins and Murkowski aren't that great. You know, they're not that great, they are Republicans. I don't agree with a lot of, I think they are very harmful in a lot of ways, but they've shown a little bit of, a little little bit more hesitant to take away women's rights or to do these kinds of things, even though I think one or both of them are deceiving themselves about the safety of Roe v.

0:07:43 Thomas: Wade under Kavanaugh. But the long-winded point I'm trying to make is this, if by some miracle they vote no or whatever happens and Kavanaugh doesn't get through, I still don't think this is some sign of immense progress. It's a sign of progress. I'm not saying it's nothing, but I want to, I want everybody to keep in mind that it took an A++ witness to do it. It had to be a professional PhD woman with, you know, who had documented some amount of documentation and and well, I don't say foresight. That's what they think she had is foresight, but documentation of her therapist notes from 2012 and all that.

0:08:29 Thomas: It took about as good for not having video or corroborating eyewitness accounts, which often you don't more often than not. You don't in these situations, it took about an A plus of a person. If somehow this stops Kavanaugh and I just want to, and this goes to an email I got to, I had somebody email me and I think this is a, a good point. Point, I I will explain it a little bit in a way that I think I'll stick to my guns. Let me read it. May emailed me this, she said, although I enjoy your breakdown in this episode, I wish you hadn't emphasized Ford's credentials so much. It implies that credibility about sexual assault is linked to one's professional status.

0:09:15 Thomas: Half the problem of getting people to believe you is that not all women are going to be ideal citizens, which is what misogynists use all the time to discredit accounts. I know it's probably probably unintentional and is certainly how the other side prefers to frame things, but let's try to raise the bar. It doesn't matter if Ford is a sex worker, a professor, mentally ill, or the first woman in space. Her credentials should make absolutely no difference to her claims or her level of believability. Why does that matter? Oh, sorry. What does matter? Victims are overwhelmingly underreporting sexual assault, vulnerable, and usually people or people in situations that make them less likely to be believed, and that apologists of assault always place the need to be believable on the victim rather than the accused.

0:10:03 Thomas: There's also the unfortunate subtext that ignores the fact that victims can be offenders too, which means there should be a greater effort to look into the claim being made, not the person who makes it. Because if we do the the latter, then we can easily end up discounting the victim reports purely because they don't live up to some sort of purity standard. Isn't that the whole point of skepticism and the skeptical movement to look at claims, not credentials?

You just used a standard trope of apologists and really should know better. I enjoy your podcast and agree with all that you said on this one, but I wish you hadn't leaned so heavily on Ford's impeccable background. It does feminism a A disservice. Again, that's from a listener named May, uh, thank you, May, I really respect where you're coming from here, and I want to emphasize that I think you are just about right on in most everything, however, I, I don't exactly see it a hundred percent the same way, I think your concerns are very valid, I want to echo that I think you're right about so much of what you're saying, I think it is important to take all of these accusations seriously, it's, it is very important, important, for the point I was just making, that it's not just those of the quote-unquote perfect victim kind of thing. It's not juste those that should be taken seriously.

It's all that should be taken seriously, and I totally agree with you. I think that this is slightly different than that. First thing that I mainly, I would say the main thing I disagree with with you on is when you say, isn't that the whole point of skepticism and the skeptical movement to look at claims, not credentials.

0:11:43 Thomas: And that doesn't, I don't think that really applies here because the claims are testimony. You know, I think what you're referring to the, to there is, okay, if, if person X says, uh, you know, makes an argument about something or maybe it's climate change, Maybe it's whatever. It doesn't matter how much you like discredit that person. You can look at their evidence and say, well, do you know, is the is the evidence there is the experimental evidence there, whatever.

But when you're talking about it, just a testimonial with no we have no video. We have nothing else to go on. Just the person's word. I actually don't think you can just look at the claim. I think that's actually impossible. Possible. I think you can look at a lot of it and we can look at how likely that is in a bubble, but I don't think it's Necessary to completely ignore the credentials of a person. I mean, because if it turned out to be, let me put it this way. I emphasized her credentials a lot because of how politically charged this is and because of how, and I am making an appeal to Republicans in that. And I agree with you there. And you're saying I'm using the language of sexist. That's a good criticism.

I think I should have emphasized that I would, you know, I believe people regardless of whether or not like they're the perfect victim. It was more to add over and above, like not only are these accusations credible and so on, and we should should believe victims, but also look at this person. So it wasn't said in the sense that only people of this quality should be believed.

0:13:26 Thomas: It was said in a sense that given the partisan and explosive and difficult nature and high profile nature, that here's an extra reason to believe when we already have good reasons. And I should have emphasized that more. And maybe you will will still say that's wrong of me to say. And, and, and we can disagree on that. Um, but I take your point and I want to emphasize that my believing her isn't simply based on her having these extra credentials. Uh, I it's just, that's just over and above to emphasize how credible she is. In addition, you know, even if she were just, you Know, Jane Schmo working at whatever, you know I still would, would, uh, I think there would be good reason to believe it.

0:14:12 Thomas: I do think that in this, in answering the specific charge of, is this some operative? Is this some patsy that the Democrats have hired somehow to say these things? You know, I think that it's, I don't, I have a hard time agreeing that we can't bring up her credentials and her life situation as a way to say, no, obviously she's not that person. You know? I don't know. Uh, listeners, let me know what you think on that. Um, but it is a great email, great criticism. And I wanted to read it because I appreciate it. And. I think you're right. And I think we can't help, but somewhat we, we, we have to look at reputation somewhat for something this high charged, you know, for something this polarizing.

0:15:04 Thomas: Uh. And And I think I think it's hard to resist using her credentials to try to appeal to people who might not believe otherwise. So Interesting ethical question there, so yeah, thank you again, and listeners, sound off, let me know what you think about that, but it's hard to resist the temptation to use these assets that she has, this impeccable personality she has to try to further drive home the point to people who aren't believing otherwise.

Anyway, so much to say, wow, where to go, I was saying, I think it's so fascinating to witness history. I mean it's, I can't think of another huge example where, you know, we have the Anita Hill hearings that went down in history, were very famous, were, you know, the world stopped and watched, and then it was very fascinating to know ahead of time that the same thing was going to happen again, you You know, I can't, I can think of another example of that besides, you know, just an election or the Olympics or, you know, something. But but to have, to have something that was a surprising political and historical moment in 1991 or two or whatever it was, and then to essentially know for like, you know, at least a week and a half, like, hey, we're just going to do that again. I was like, wow, we get to witness history and we did witness history.

And we saw that a lot of Republican white men are still living in history. They're still, still parts of, they're a little too historical for my taste. I wish they were, there are less history and more future progressive kind of people. And what they did was bitch in moan.

Most of what the Republican men did in addition to outsourcing their sexism to someone else and outsourcing their sexism and their disbelief of credible accusations to another person to take the heat, I guess, in addition to that, when they weren't doing that,

0:16:57 Thomas: They spent their time griping and moaning about Feinstein, who has done exactly what the victim wanted, and there's a whole bunch of debate about, I think they were trying to make the accusation, it took a long time for this to come to a head, by the way, it wasn't until late in the day. When Dianne Feinstein, because so many people had implied that she leaked it or her staff leaked it. And it was frustrating to me because I think it was such an important question and I wished it could have gotten addressed sooner. But eventually, finally, she said, we didn't leak it. Nobody leaked it because all the Republicans did was talk about how this was a conspiracy theory by the Democrats. This is a conspiracy story. Why didn't they come forward sooner? Why? Well, we've already had her testimony for why Dr.

0:17:46 Thomas: Ford's testimony was she realized it wasn't going to make a lick of difference and she didn't want to go through the very horrendous experience that she went through, you know? So unfortunately it was the worst of all worlds there because it got out late. You know, they didn't have time. They're pretending, Republicans are pretending, if they had, got off all, if only we'd found out sooner, we could have, what, done nothing, because you're not going, you could do it now, you're not doing anything, but that's their excuse. If we got it sooner, oh, if only we got sooner, the FBI could have looked into it. Well, as so many Democrats pointed out, the FBI looked into Anita Hill, took them three days and the FBI could have done that. They could have, you know, and the other big debate was the FBI, let's quote Joe Biden. He said in 1991 that the FBI doesn't come to conclusions about this thing.

0:18:34 Thomas: They just quote the information. That was said three or four times by Republicans Republicans with indignance. A couple of things to point out. First off, fuck Joe Biden for how he dealt with the Anita Hill hearings, because he didn't deal with it well, you know, and we can judge him for that. And we can say that the paramount example, the sterling example that we're going for is not what did a man do in 1991? It should be what should we do now in light of of what we know now. And Joe Biden, I got to say, I mean, there's things I like about him, but there's a lot of stuff that I think he kind of messed up.

And this is one of those things, Because Anita Hill, so much of Clarence Thomas's defense, I don't know if I'm telling anybody anything they don't. No, it's been all around lately, but I've been interested in Anita Hill for a while. Gosh, I can't remember. I think one of the books I read in the last year or so talked kind of before this was an issue so much because it wasn't magically with Gorsuch. We didn't do our Democrat plot to unseat him by faking a lifetime of knowledge and trauma. But anyway, the point is, it's very interesting. And what he did, what Biden did, and what Thomas's defense was, was that this is not me. I have a sterling reputation. It was extraordinarily like, I almost said Gorsuch, but no, it was extraordinarily, extraordinarily like Kavanaugh's.

0:20:08 Thomas: I think Kavanaugh, I think with good reason, I think Kavanaugh saw how Clarence Thomas got away with this and is still on the court and has had a 26 year career on the court and got away with it. And he said, okay, well, that seemed to work, let's do that. Let's get really mad and yell and be indignant and that, that, and it might work. Honestly, it probably will work. And one of his defenses, one of Thomas' defenses, was people attacked Anita Hill saying, oh, she's nuts, nobody else is saying this, it's just her, she's got this sexual imagination, this deviant imagination, and more women were willing to testify, which I think would have made an enormous impact. It's easy to paint, especially in 1991, it was easy to paint one woman as, oh look, she just, ah, she is women, huh?

0:20:58 Thomas: Crazy. And they got away with it. But it would have been a lot harder if Joe Biden had allowed other women to testify. They were ready to, they could have, and he didn't allow it, you know, with the idea that they were on some sort of time limit. But he could have allowed it and he did not. You know, to be fair, they voted not to recommend, but of course, it still went through and it passed 52-48, I think. So, anyway, the point is, that's not the shining example of how we want to handle these things. It's not. I mean, maybe the senators, none of the Democrats wanted to besmirch the good name of Joe Biden, but let's face it, we can do better. So a lot of the talk, a lot of the griping from the Republicans was about the fact that, look, the FBI doesn't lead to a conclusion, it'll just give you all the information.

0:21:46 Thomas: To which I wish, I think Democrats kind of said it, but, you know, in fairness, they're on time limits and they don't chair the committee, so they had to be very careful and pick their moments, but the easy response to that is, yeah, but we could at least get the FBI to gather all that information. They could talk to Mark Judge. So many times Dr. Ford said, Hey, I could help you out better with the timeline. If I knew when Mark judge worked at Safeway, because that's what I saw him shortly after in his job at Safe way. And that would help pinpoint the time. Now in editor, somebody found in his book where that is. And actually it does line up. Um, they, in his books, I think he wrote about when he worked there and it lines up with her timeline already, but still that is the kind of thing the FBI could do.

0:22:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, maybe they're not going to come up with a conclusion, but they're going to gather more info. They're going do interview people in a more intimidating way than Mark Judge, who just has his lawyer write a statement. And there's no real penalty if it's wrong. Like, you know, there's some argument about that in the hearings. But that's definitely a different situation than FBI agents following up on all these leads, talking to people, getting them to say what they remember. Member, there's no reason not to do that. There's absolutely no reason not to doing that. The Republicans bitched and moaned about how, oh, well, they don't come to conclusions. Well, they don't need to come to a conclusion. They would at least give us more information and make more people, put a little more pressure on people in a formal FBI setting.

0:23:17 Thomas: That's more pressure. And the other thing Republicans griped about, as I said, was the timing question. And it took so long, to get back to this, it took so So long later, finally, Feinstein said, yeah, we didn't leak it. And someone pointed out, well, she told her friends. It's probably one of her friends told the press. And then the Republicans said, well they didn't have the letter. Did they have the matter? You know, they couldn't have. There's no way because only you had the letter, there's no, you had to leak it and then Feinsteins said the letter didn't leek. The letter didn't leak it, all that leaked was enough information to know that Dr. Ford was was involved. That's all that leaked because the timeline going back through it, roughly speaking, was in July. She wrote these letters.

0:24:03 Thomas: She wrote the letters not to try to do a last minute thing to get rid of the thing. She wrote the letter before Kavanaugh was the pick because she thought given all else being equal, maybe the president could just pick someone else. Her job wasn't to ensure that a Republican judge wasn't seated. Her job was, oh, if I get to him in time, and she didn't know how to do this. She went through several routes, but she thought if I get to them in time, I can stop. I could just have them pick someone else and I don't have to live through my abuser being nominated to the highest court in the land, a lifetime appointment, prestigious appointment. And so that's what she tried to do. And then, as I was saying, she got to the point where she realized not going to make a fucking difference because these people don't care.

0:24:51 Thomas: And so she wanted to be anonymous, anonymous, and the the the theory, the Republican conspiracy theory is, ah, well, what happened was those Democrats leaked it at the last possible minute so it'd be too late, and then they'd get real, they'd be able to take the Senate and get the spot, no, not what happened, the press got enough information to see that it was Dr. Ford and to start hounding her, to work in her house and bothering her and telling the story incorrectly, and only then did she say, well, well, okay, fine, then I have to tell my story, if it's, if it's going to be told, but wrong, uh, and my name's already out there anyway, then I'm going to tell it. And so that's when she decided to, so no great conspiracy, but that was, that was what 80% of any time that Republicans talked and didn't just outsource it to this female prosecutor.

0:25:43 Thomas: That was 80% of what they said. Besides, Lindsey Graham went on just a Trump Giuliani-esque rant. I want to be fair to Lindsey Graham. He's better at it than Giuliani. He was actually coherent, but he was unhinged. That was strange. Very strange. But as I said, Kavanaugh, I think, really did look at the Clarence Thomas playbook and decide that's what he was going to do, and another thing I have to point out, just for a second, in going over the Anita Hill stuff, fuck Clarenc Thomas, because seriously, when we, if I had my way, what we would do is we would vote, Democrats would vote in just massive numbers, just landslide numbers, and we take a super majority in the Senate, and we would just impeach these assholes because there are going to be two rapists on the court, strictly speaking, accused sexual harassers and assaulters.

0:26:46 Thomas: Strictly speaking, I guess not accused rapists, but accused sexual pests. There will be two of them out of nine on the court. Two of them.

0:26:57 Thomas: Ideally, we could just be so enraged and so motivated that all those non-voters, which vastly outnumber the voters, maybe not vastly, but outnumber voters by quite a bit, that would make a huge swing. I mean, the number of people who don't vote make up enough to easily swing everything if they came out and take a supermajority and impeach these assholes and get two actual justices. We'll give them Gorsuch, so we'll kind of do a swap, you know, know, like Gorsuch was, you know, we'll give you that because Kennedy retired. Presumably he would have retired when there was a Republican president. All right, as a show of goodwill, we will give you Gorsuche, even though he sucks, he's the worst, whatever.

0:27:42 Thomas: But no Kavanaugh, no Clarence Thomas. Those are two sexual assaulters and harassers. You're not, they're not going to be on the court and we'll impeach them and we will put in some progressives. And then by the way, that has the the charming and delightful side consequence that we could also make progress on stuff like Citizens United and protect women's rights and gay rights and all that good stuff that also comes with the court. But most importantly, we just wouldn't have accused, attempted rapists and sexual harassers on the court, that would be the probably the number one benefit there. But, as I was saying, fuck Clarence Thomas, and the main reason is, I think what infuriated me the most in going back and listening to that, and there's a lot, there's just a lot of awful, misogynist, shitty, Orrin Hatch stuff, all this stuff, maybe the most infuriating thing was when, in a last-ditch effort, Clarence Thomas turned it into a race thing.

0:28:42 Thomas: He had the fucking stones, he had the gall to sit there, and in 1991, knowing knowing how much racial tension there was, that was a very tense time racially, knowing that he could leverage that fact to his advantage. Knowing that as a conservative Black man, he was going to use the issue of race just when he needed it to cover up for his sexual harassment and then never be helpful to, you know, progressives again. Like, just use race to his his advantage in this one instance, which by the way, was a Black woman accusing him of sexual harassment, had nothing to do with race. He got up there. He said, this is a, a high-tech lynching, a high-tech lynching was a Black woman just telling the truth about the sexual harassment she faced.

0:29:37 Thomas: What a fucking asshole. What kind of an, what kind of a moral asshole could do that? Could sit up there and use race in that way, has nothing, is a Black woman accusing him, has nothing to do with race in any way.

Oh, man, all right, back to our current crisis, uh, Kavanaugh was an asshole, he was an, asshole, now, he, he didn't have the benefit of being able to play the race card, or, or maybe he would have, I don't really, he might have, he, I'm surprised he didn't go with the, oh, you, did you know that Irish people were, uh, were slaves, or some, some white Alt-right talking point like that, but no, he didn't, but he was an asshole, and I just have to point out the double standard in society, I'm gonna play you a little bit of a clip from him with Senator Klobuchar. Here's what I found, now, this happened pretty recently, so I don't know if there's a great clip of it, here is one I found that's a minute, let's play it here, and just imagine if he were a woman, what our reaction to this would be,

0:30:39 Clip: I will, could I just ask one more question? Redacted information about that. Okay. Drinking is one thing, but the concern is about truthfulness. And in your written testimony, you said sometimes you had too many drinks. Was there ever a time when you drank so much that you couldn't remember what happened or part of what happened the night before? No, I remember what happened. And I think you've probably had beer. Center and and so you're saying there's never been a case where you drank so much that you didn't remember what happened the night before or part of what happened that's you're asking about? Yeah, blackout. I don't know, have you? Could you answer the question, judge? I just, so, you, that's not happened, is that your answer? Yeah. And I'm curious if you... You have. I have no drinking problem, Judge. Nor do I. Okay.

0:31:34 Thomas: Okay, you know, that didn't actually capture it, it was the part before that, where he was an asshole to Klobuchar, talks over her, doesn't answer the question, insists on answering a different question or going on a rant, interrupting, disrespecting, taking senators' time. He was unhinged at times when it came to that. And it further outlined the misogyny because he did it more to women. And he really did. It was It was Klobuchar. It was Feinstein. It was it was the female senators they did this to. And I think I think Cory Booker, you know, he, he was able to command his respect, for one. Anyway, I think there are a few others, in a way that mysteriously the female senators were not able to, and had to just sit there and say, no, stop, it's, I'm trying to have five minutes, because these have fucking five minutes, they got five goddamn minutes. And Kavanaugh knows that what he can do is is just give this long-winded answer.

So if someone asks a simple yes or no question, where it's, hey, have you ever been blackout drunk? I would invite you to refer to my... First off, at Yale, I was a model. And he knows he could just fucking... Filibuster and not answer the question, and then the time will run out, and he'll be

0:32:08 Clip: You

0:32:53 Thomas: Saved by his Republican friends, it was, that was the repeated pattern, and even though that wasn't the particular moment with Klobuchar that I was thinking, still, that displayed an enormous lack of respect, when she asked, have you ever drank so much that you couldn't remember?, to which the obvious answer is yes, he can't say it, he knows he can say it because that opens him up to potentially being able to say, well, then maybe he didn't remember this, he knows he can't answer truthfully so he has to lie. Of course, of course, you, you're part of the hundred keg club and the Ralph club and all that shit, of course you've drank so much that you didn't remember not only the whole night, just even parts of nights, of course you have.

0:33:39 Thomas: Of fucking course you have, we all know you're lying, and instead of, and he can even just say no, I think, because he knows he's lying, he has to say, oh, uh, blackout, no, have you, I'm curious if you've had it, are you kidding me, you're going to ask your, your, your answer to the senator, to the senator's question is, have, do you have a drink, I know you are, but what am I, what, unbelievable, he, that was so bad, that even he, uh, after they came back from the recess, he apologized, oh, I'm sorry, I asked a question after that, my fault, fault.

Yeah. But I'm really proud of the Democrats in this committee, I really am, I think almost all of them, you know, Feinstein let it off, if my memory's correct, and she didn't have a whole lot, to be honest, and I think she's so nice of a person that she kind of allowed him to do his filibustering, and surprisingly, Kamala Harris went near the end, if not last, it might have ended with a Republican, and and she kind of let him do that, too. I was actually surprised. Maybe part of it was going last and having other people kind of already having made a lot of the points and that kind of thing. But I'm a huge Kamala Harris fan. And I think she let him kind of filibuster for a good minute on an answer that wasn't, you know. So that wasn't amazing. But nevertheless, I'm very proud of virtually, I think, almost every one of the Democrats in this committee. I think they did a great job. Here's some that I just jotted down. This was a great one about Mark Judge. Blumenthal put this perfectly.

0:35:23 Thomas: He said to Kavanaugh, he said, hey, as a federal judge, you always want the best evidence, right? Which, of course, is if you're an OA listener, you'll recognize, you know, there's actually a rule about the best evidenced. You want the best evidences. You don't put forth into evidence a copy of a photocopy of something. You want the original document. You don'T want someone saying that they know somebody who'd said something. You want the actual person. And he was referring to Mark Judge saying, why isn't Mark Judge here? Why aren't we talking to Mark judge? Why are we talking about Mark judge? And also Blumenthal's questioning about Renata is how you pronounce it. Apparently it's R E N A T E, but it's a name. And apparently it's Renata is how he's Kavanaugh said.

0:36:12 Thomas: She pronounces it. Good questions on that, and we, and Kavanaugh would have us believe that in this yearbook, where I think four of them were labeled as Renata alumni, which is clearly, clearly, in 1982 or whatever, just a brag about sexual exploits, or at least, if not actual full-on sex, some sort of like, oh, we made out. It's very clearly what, and in fact, that was what his lawyer said. Kavanaugh's lawyer said, oh, is referring to the fact that they kissed, and then Kavanaugh comes on and he denies all of that, so he's countering, he's actually contradicting what his own lawyer said, and he's saying, oh no, we just all knew her. Oh, yeah, sure, sure, you put, the sure, you four boys, uh, in 1982, put that in a yearbook, hey, we all know, uh, Renata, so we'll put, yeah, everybody knows everybody, it's fucking high school, you don't, do that's not what that is, we know you're lying, you're lying, and we know you're lying.

Here's another great question I have written down, actually, unfortunately, I didn't write down who asked it, might have been Harris, I don't remember, but, but, great question that one of the Democrats asked, which was, if you were hiring for a position, and you had plenty of qualified candidates, and had credible allegations against one of them, wouldn't you just, what would you do? Wouldn't you move on to another candidate? Or, something like that, that.

And to be fair, to give the devil his, you know, devil's advocate, uh, with Kavanaugh, that's an impo-, he, he can't answer, oh, yeah, I just move on with somebody, to somebody else, because then he doesn't get the job.

0:37:53 Thomas: You know, like, like as much as I dislike Kavanauh, I think there's, there's some times where we're holding him to a little bit of an unfair standard, where he, we're expecting that he would just take, like if he's not gonna just take himself off the list, he's also not going to just say, well, yeah, I would just look for someone else. Like that's expecting a lot. Uh, but still the clear answer is yes. I mean, that, that is the answer. The answer is we're not in a court of law. This is not, we're Not putting him in jail currently. I Mean, the statute of limitations isn't up. So if there's enough evidence, but we're, not putting him In jail. We're just talking about a, uh, promo we're. Not even just talking about a job as in like, Ooh, we'll get a job to feed his family. No, we were talking about out one of the most prestigious positions and promotions a person can possibly have in the world, in the earth.

0:38:49 Thomas: This is one ofthe most prestigious appointments. So, the obvious answer is, yes, you've got all kinds of qualified people. One of them has a very credible allegation against them. You just move on to somebody else. Youjust say, all right, we haven't run out of people who Who are qualified? There are a lot. There are a lot even if you're a Republican and you believe in that nonsense. There's still a ton. There's a whole list from the Heritage Foundation or whatever the hell federalist nonsense of probably what 40, 50, how many were on that list? There's plenty. There's plenty. You just move on. That is the correct answer. So I know he can't say that and the other thing he can't say is about so the FBI investigation. Now I think the Democrats are right about about this, but I don't put it on Kavanaugh because what they tried to do is Democrats tried to get Kavanaug to say, hey, don't you think there should be an FBI investigation?

0:39:47 Thomas: And don't you find it curious that your accuser is fine with an FBI investigation and mysteriously you're not. And I think that's a tough one because saying there should be an F.B.I. investigation that they should stop the proceedings is pretty pretty close to what I was saying where he, you know, if you expect that of him, then you should just expect him to withdraw. Because that's like saying we need to stop, stop all this. I, I think the blame for that falls more on the Republicans and Trump than it does on Kavanaugh himself is all I'm trying to say. So that, but, but still, I mean, Democrats are right that that should be happening, but it's not Kavanaugh's responsibility to demand that. It's Republicans and Trump.

0:40:35 Thomas: And by the way, keep track of how many times Republicans just lied. I mean, it's not news, but they're just like, well, anybody here can ask for an FBI investigation. They said that Grassley said that several times. Anybody here can asked why you, why are you complaining about this? You can ask for an FBI investigation and then, uh, they produce Democrats produced evidence. Yeah, we did. We've done that multiple times. We're already done that. Here's the letter saying we've done it in the past. Oh, boy, what a, what day. Another thing I jotted down was, was essentially, if I could characterize and sort of paraphrase Kavanaugh's position, it's essentially this, I don't question Ford's credibility, I just think she's incorrect or lying about one of the most formative and distressing experiences of her entire life.

0:41:25 Thomas: You know, that's essentially, that, I know that's me strawmanning, but that's essentially it. I'm poking fun, but it's this line they're trying to walk because they know, they, they, like I said, they learned 10% of a lesson from Anita Hill. They learned we need to apparently hire this prosecutor who, who was almost entirely pointless. And I don't put that on her. Uh, I don, I actually don't put that on, on the prosecutor that the Republicans hired. She was pointless because this isn't a court of law.

And she was getting, what she was doing was going going through cross-examination as though it was a court, and that involves taking hours, hours of painstaking time to like establish all this stuff and whatever, and all They had was five minutes, and she only had five minutes every other time because it would be the Republican would yield their time to her, and then it's the Democrats' turn, and then the Republican turn. So she would get these five minute bits that were nothing. They did, they accomplished, accomplished absolutely nothing. It was immensely pointless, and they shouldn't have done it because I know they're trying to cover their asses, but this is a political hearing. It just is. I mean, it's a political healing.

It's not a legal proceeding, and it's not trial, and there's not infinite time, and there are not objections. Well, I guess there were a couple of few, but there's not really objections in the same way. There's not, you know, it just isn't.

There are not closing statements where she could summarize, like, here's, and I thought that was interesting, because if you listen to opening arguments as well, or a lot of awful movies specifically, when we look at these really bad portrayals of the law, one of my favorite things to do,

0:43:05 Thomas: There's this idea of asking too many questions, like what you actually want to do in a court of law is ask just enough and then wait until your closing argument to make the final statement. Because if you ask the question too far, if you asked one too many any questions, then you allow the witness to say, well, no, that's just wrong, I, blah, blah, blah, and you kind of mess up your, your point and your momentum. But what you, what she was doing, I think she actually, because she's a skilled prosecutor, what he was doing was just asking these starter questions. And then, you know, normally in a court, then that you'd get the chance to make a closing statement, and you'd be able to say, remember when she said this and and remember when she said this, and you'd get to tie it all together in a way that you don't do when you're questioning somebody, because then you have to ask a, you have to be asking questions, not tying things together, and B, they can always just give you the answer that you don't want.

0:43:58 Thomas: So I thought, I thought that was interesting, but yeah, she was, she shouldn't have been there. Republican should have just done it. I mean, I, I don't know what they can short of, of actually allowing a female Republican into that committee. I'm not sure what they could have done, you know, like either way, they're going to get shit. You know, either they're all men and they ask her questions, and then they're like, oh, look at these men asking her questions, or they let someone else do it and they kind of look cowardly, and it didn't really serve any real function. And then they get shit for that. So honestly, I think they were kind of screwed either way. The only acceptable thing would be if you had a party that encouraged women to run, which you don't. Record numbers of women are, are running for office, and they're doing so on the Democrat side, I think for very obvious reasons, because a misogynist rapist is at the head of the Republican Party, and there's a lot in the party.

0:44:55 Thomas: So, they couldn't really do anything short of that. Um, here's one thing that I find the most distressing, I, I said I was proud of the Democrats, and I am. I think they did a, a pretty, pretty bang-up job. There's not a lot you can do in this situation, um, they pushed him, I think they could have maybe pushed him a little hard. I, they all needed to recognize that this is a filibustering, time-wasting asshole, and treat him as a hostile witness, essentially, and just say, no, yes or no, answer my question, yes, or no. I don't want to hear your explanation for some shit. I don't want to hear you go off about how you went to Yale and you were in great grades and you played basketball and all that fucking shit. Answer my question. I only have five minutes. Answer my questions. I just wanted to say that so many times. Answer the fucking question. I have five fucking minutes. Answer the question. No. Yes or no. Yes or no?

0:45:40 Thomas: Yes or no? That's what I wanted everybody to do. Some people did. It's tough because you have to know that ahead of time somehow, and it's probably something they're not used to doing, because our republic is falling apart, and it used to be some, some sense of decorum, kind of at least a little bit more. But one thing I am disappointed in is nobody asked about Ed Whalen, which maybe there's reasons for that. Maybe there's something I don't know. But that strikes me as a really, really questionable thing, because if you don't know, Ed Whelen is the nut job who, by the way, he was just like a Republican dude, like a operative. I think he might've been in charge of a think tank. So, like, this isn't Alex Jones, but it's so interesting in this Trump era, how many otherwise respectable Republicans you thought were just like, "Oh, that's a, that's a Republican" turn into Alex Jones.

0:46:35 Thomas: Because what he did was he had this whole fucking conspiracy theory about how it's actually some other guy and she mistook them. And it's based on Zillow. Yeah. You probably saw it on, um, uh, this week tonight or last week tonight. One of my favorite shows. And it's very questionable because he had the information about the accuser, about Dr. Ford, before it went public. Now, he didn't have it before. Now here's the thing. Some people were trying to say because he, on LinkedIn, this was the evidence by the way, Dr. Ford showed somebody that he was searching her on LinkedIn. Now it's not as bad as some people are making it out to be. So some people said, aha, he was searching it on LinkedIn.

0:47:23 Thomas: So therefore Kavanaugh actually knew that it was her. And so he remembers, but he's just lying about remembering. But it's not that it's, it's that it was shortly after the New York Times contacted them for comment, or sorry, the Washington Post, not the New York Times, the Washington Post contacted for comment, but before they posted their final article. So, uh, it could simply be, and it probably is, that, uh, they contacted the Kavanaugh camp and said, "Here's the person, what do you remember about her, she's, we're going to publish this soon, she's making the accusations," and shortly after that, but before the article went public, Ed Whalen is searching on LinkedIn for Dr. Ford. So that means somebody, either in the White House or in Kavanaugh, or Kavanaugh's camp, was communicating with this guy to come up with this nuts theory that he thought was going to like save the day.

0:48:17 Thomas: Really bizarre. So I'm curious why nobody asked about that, because that is weird. But it's possible that that just wouldn't move the needle. I mean, maybe it's not, strictly speaking, illegal, or maybe it is not even unethical to have somebody be helping you out like that, I guess. I don't know. But it, I, I dunno, it would have been interesting to hear what Kavanaugh thought of all that nonsense and maybe try to get him on the record as denying or something like that.

So, wish somebody had asked about that. Another quick random side note, even Sam Harris is on the right side of this. I tell you, know, I, I criticize Sam Harris a lot, uh, but there are some things he gets right. Uh, he's, he's been pretty good on Trump, although he has a lot of uh pro-Trump people on his show, or at least people who make annoying excuses about it, but he's anti-tramp, I'll give him that. And also He's has been tweeting about this, saying it's, you know, like the, the odds are that Ford's telling the truth, it makes no sense that she wouldn't be telling the truth. And he even said, um, what a point I was making, which is cases of mistaken identity like this make no sense. And I want to point this out because I got an email about this. And again, I addressed it on a lengthy personal Twitter thread. So check out at Serious Pod. Uh, I just retweeted it.

I talked about some trauma, minor trauma in the grand scheme of things, but some traumatic experiences I had in grade school, and the fact that I will fucking never forget that not only who it was, but their first and and last names. I don't need to look at a yearbook. I know these people, these kids in my past.

0:49:57 Thomas: I will never forget them. It's been 20 years, 20 plus years. You can ask me in another 20 years. I will still remember their first and last name. I'll never forget. Someone emailed me and said, but don't you know, eyewitnesses are always wrong. There's some talk about like, Like, oh, oftentimes that they think a black guy assaulted them. They can't even identify who it is in a lineup. And it's like, that may all be true.

And there's definitely a lot of inherent racism in a lot of these accusations of eyewitness accounts and stuff like that. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about someone being attacked in the dark by a stranger. We're talking about someone being attacked at a small gathering of people they knew. New. You don't forget which of your friends abused you. I'm sorry, you just don't. You don't mistake, oh, which was my friend? Because it goes down, it's burned into your mind. When somebody abuses you like that and you fear for your life, it is seared into your mind. You're not going to forget who it was.

You might be fuzzy on some details, as she is, and by the way, I actually, and this is, again, in this lengthy Twitter thread that I recommend you check out and signal boost it if you like it, I have no idea when these things happen to me, again not, not as major as Dr. Ford's trauma, not even close, but some things that, that were pretty traumatic to me. I have, I had no idea what they were.

They were any time, I think I have the year, but I have have no fucking idea the month. I couldn't tell you if it was before Christmas, after Christmas. I have no idea.

0:51:40 Thomas: No clue. I don't remember a whole lot of who else was around. I remember maybe a couple people. Furthermore, I doubt these people remember it in the same way, because when you are abused by someone in some way or traumatized by someone, you remember, and they might not, because because it's just not as important to them. It's way less mentally scarring to do something like this, especially if you're drunk as Kavanaugh was. And especially if you don't even think you're doing anything wrong because you're maybe a misogynist or not really that keen on caring about women or something. It's not going to go down in your memory in the same way. And the people who were at the party, you know, they didn't witness it. They're not going going to remember. You will have a very hard time remembering what happened at a random party 36 years ago if nothing notable happened.

0:52:33 Thomas: You know, that's going to be very difficult, very difficult. Especially for these other witnesses. And that was most of Kavanaugh's defense was, oh, the other people she said, they don't remember it. They don't even, you know, yeah, well, they probably wouldn't. Nothing happened to them. This wasn't even a party. I thought that was an interesting piece of testimony from Dr. Ford as well. When she said this wasn't a party, this was something she thought was going to lead up to a party later. This was just like a couple of friends gathered around. So, you know, it makes sense that it wouldn't be written in Kavanaugh's calendar. But anyway, yeah, no, I think the odds are vanishingly small that she has mistaken him for someone else. And that is the only defense that's being offered by Kavanaagh and Republicans because they don't want to trash Dr.

0:53:19 Thomas: Ford. They want to say, oh, yep, she's very credible. She's, I respect her. She's just fundamentally wrong about the most, one of the most important things that ever happened to her and that traumatized her for life, which ultimately is contradictory, but that's what they're trying to pull off. But anyway, finally, I, I think it'll work. I think he's going to get through.

0:53:42 Thomas: It's clo-, I'm not 100%, you know, I-, pessimistically, I am, but, but you know because there's some chance that Collins and Murkowski will just not do it. There's, there's, a tiny chance, but I don't know, No, I think his indignance and his emotion and his firm denials and his, like I said, I mean, mainly indignants, his yelling, his anger, his all that stuff. I think that gives them enough room to be like, oh, well, you know, she's mistaken. Oh, the poor thing. Oh, The Poor Thing. She just does. She's mixed up. She's mix. No, they won't say only only Orrin Hatch is misogynistic enough to kind of put it that way. But that is what they're saying.

0:54:28 Thomas: I mean, if, if they're able to say she has the wrong person, there's, they're essentially saying this woman is, this woman's mixed up. You know, she can't be trusted. She's not a reliable witness. Um, and, uh, I don't know. I think he'll get through. I actually do. Uh, the votes tomorrow. Well, there's a vote tomorrow. That's for the, I guess that's the committee vote. So we'll see if that, I mean that'll be the first step, but I think you'll get through.

Meanwhile, I'm just seeing now, and again, this is a very quick reaction, but, yeah, I've been brewing a lot of these thoughts all day, but I, I, hope this helps some people, you know, I hope you enjoy it, I know it helps me to kind of put down my thoughts and yell about some stuff, and I would love to hear from you, by the way, I didn't have a whole lot of voicemails to go with, it was supposed to be a voicemail episode, but it kind of, Preempted that because I only had a couple, and they're all from men, which, you know, no offense, I value all my listeners, uh, certainly value my male listeners, but in a time like this, I, I, uh, I didn't want to do a voicemail episode with with just a few, with me and a few dudes, so I decided to just kind of talk on my own about Kavanaugh.

Um, but I would love to hear from you, and I would still love to play your thoughts, especially if you're a, a woman, or especially if you're a, an abuse survivor, in light of all of this stuff, I would love to hear your thoughts. I would love to signal boost you. So, as always, the number is in the show notes. You can look at it right now and on your phone or whatever, it'll be there. And I'd love to hear from you. Uh, and in general, even, even Kavanaugh side, that is one of my favorite things to do is, uh, do the voicemail shows.

0:56:10 Thomas: So, uh. But it, but it does take a listener participation and it was a little low this month, so I didn't have a lot to go on. Um, when, by the way, listenership is the same, so it's, it's not that, uh, it's something else. And let me know if there's some way I can modify my behavior to, uh... to be more encouraging, uh.. or to... to help to facilitate. And you can also, by the way, you could send an email recording if you... if that's better, uh....

That kind of thing. So, I encourage that and I, uh,... thank you for listening. And I'm just now seeing a clip on Twitter, which is, Tucker Carlson really wanted more questions about Ford's fear of flying, God, oh, these people, that was, that WAS a line of questioning, uh, you're afraid of flying are you not, yes, uh how'd you get here, I flew, whoa, case dismissed, yes sometimes people overcome anxieties they have, if they need to, and sometimes they don't, sometimes it modifies their decisions. Uh, my brother's terrified of flying. He, he's a very anxious guy, uh, but he does fly on occasion. Whereas my dad is terrified of flying and he will never fucking fly. So it just kind of depends. Um, my mom also is terrified to flying. I think I could imagine her jumping on a flight if it was a really important trip. Um. But, but yes, this idea that this was some killer line line of questioning. What the fuck? God, these people. All right. I think that's about enough of my unfiltered ramblings and rantings and ravings on Kavanaugh.

0:57:47 Thomas: I predict he will be a Supreme Court justice. And as I said, I mean, if we can motivate unprecedented numbers of people to vote, we could get rid of him. It's possible. Very unlikely, vanishingly unlikely, but it's possible. And to all the court packing people, I've said on opening arguments why I don't think that's a good idea. Court packing is something that can instantly be, it's an arms race. Whereas I think impeachment is slightly less so. I think it takes some grounds. I think it take some legitimate grounds. And we have legitimate grounds when it comes to Clarence Thomas and Kavanaugh. I have legitimate ground. And if those grounds ever come about for for a Democrat, well, then they should go too, because I don't want sexual predators on the Supreme court.

0:58:35 Thomas: So that's something I'm willing to go with where if you go the court packing route, the next president can just do the same thing and it never ends. It just becomes an arms race. And I just don't think that's sustainable. All right. Thank you so much for listening. I really encourage you to support the show, patreon.com/seriouspod, seriouspod.com/support. Please support the show. If you want this to continue, you know, if, if people don't support it, then, then it doesn't a continue. And that's just a simple fact. Thank you so much to those who do. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week.