Yesterday we saw the Brett Kavanaugh that his victims saw

tl,dr; Yesterday was a lot. An angry, spittle-flecked, partisan hack cried, screamed, pouted, spouted conspiracy theories, and most importantly lied under oath, looking every bit like the aggressive mean drunk that his victims told us he was. And Republican men apologized to him—to him!—without saying a single word to the woman he attacked, even as she earnestly, painfully relived one of the worst moments of her life.

My write-up:

After a harrowing hearing on Thursday, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee look set to advance the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. The vote could come less than 24 hours after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified under oath that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers.

Even though two more women—Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick—have accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault on the record and have called for an FBI investigation into their allegations, only Dr. Blasey Ford was allowed to testify.

Afraid of the optics of having an all-male panel of GOP senators grill a survivor of sexual assault, the GOP hired Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to speak during their allotted time. No GOP senator asked a question of Dr. Blasey Ford. No GOP senator apologized to her for the ordeal of reliving the worst day of her life in front of millions of people.

Her testimony was earnest, polite, endearing, raw, and gut-wrenching. In one particularly she described what she remembered most about the attack: “The laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense."

In contrast, Kavanaugh dropped the mask of calm, impartial judge. His shockingly vitriolic and partisan performance revealed a temperament and political agenda completely inappropriate for the Court. His opening statement included conspiracy theories about the Clintons seeking revenge and veiled threats against his political opponents. Throughout his testimony, he yelled at Democratic senators, dodged questions about his drinking, and misled about the evidence. In one particularly notable moment, he attacked Senator Amy Klobuchar after she’d talked about her own family’s experience with alcoholism. Jennifer Rubin characterized the exchange this way:

The worst moment was his confrontation with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) who questioned him about blackout drinking. She explained that she understood alcohol abuse because her father was an alcoholic. Have you ever blacked out? she asked. He sneered in response, “Have you?” It was a moment of singular cruelty and disrespect. One saw a flash in the exchange with Klobuchar the same sense of entitlement, cruelty and lack of simple decency that Christine Blasey Ford allegedly experienced way back when, the memory seared in her brain of two obnoxious teens laughing at her ordeal.

At first, the GOP appeared ready to have Mitchell question Kavanaugh too but her questions seemed to rattle the nominee—particularly about a date on his calendar that seemed to corroborate Blasey Ford’s claims—and they quickly sidelined her, opting to use their time themselves to apologize to Kavanaugh and defend him. Where the GOP men on the panel had sat silently through Blasey Ford’s testimony, viewers watched as they apologized, one by one, to the man accused of sexually assaulting her and two other women.

So far, Republicans have refused to re-open the FBI’s background investigation into Kavanaugh or to subpoena Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s high school friend implicated by both Dr. Blasey Ford and Ms. Swetnick. One commentator noted the absurdity of the GOP’s position: “To say the FBI doesn't come to conclusions so you don't need FBI investigations is like saying MRIs don't come to conclusions so you don't need MRI scans. The purpose is to surface information so others can make judgments.”

During the hearing, Kavanaugh himself was given multiple opportunities to say whether he wanted an FBI investigation and he refused to answer each time. The American Bar Association and four Republican governors have called for the vote to be delayed until a thorough, non-partisan investigation is undertaken, while the staunchly anti-abortion Jesuit magazine America reversed their support of Kavanaugh and called for the nomination to be withdrawn.

The full Senate could take its first procedural vote on Saturday with a vote on confirmation occurring Tuesday. Key votes will come from Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Call your senators today! Tell them to stop the rush to confirmation for Kavanaugh and demand a thorough investigation into the allegations brought forward against him.

Finally, even as the vote remains uncertain, it’s clear that we’re in the middle of cultural sea change in how survivors are viewed. On C-SPAN, callers were describing their own long-hidden assaults, while around the country, women and men were talking to loved ones for the first time. On Fox News, conservative journalist Chris Wallace shared, “Over the course of this week, I think like a lot of American families, my family has been discussing this and disagreeing and arguing about it. Two of my daughters have told me stories I had never heard before about things that happened to them in high school—and hadn’t told their parents. I don’t know if they told their friends. Certainly they never reported it to the police.”