Journos Offer Predictable Reactions to Kavanaugh’s Defiant Testimony

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh (pictured above) earned everything from praise and sympathy to insults, derision and mockery from journalists and talking heads after his passionate and defiant testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

“I thought it was a temper tantrum. He wants to be on the Supreme Court, and he’s not going to be,” former federal prosecutor and MSNBC legal analyst Cynthia Alksne said on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” following Kavanaugh’s lengthy opening statement.

“He was angry and belligerent, and it was kind of scary,” Alksne added. “It was — it’s completely everything that a federal judge isn’t, was that 50-minute rant. So I think he’s done himself a great disservice in his judge role … As a judge, he’s hurt himself immeasurably.”

Alksne also said, “Can you imagine if a woman came to this hearing and had a temper tantrum and screamed and interrupted senators and behaved in the manner in which he has? … She’d be taken out of the room in a straitjacket.”

Christine Blasey Ford, who was the first woman to accuse Kavanaugh publicly of sexually assaulting her, 36 years ago during a high school gathering, testified first before the committee. Two other women have accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulted them in the days following Ford’s public accusations on September 16.

“Not only do I find him very credible and moving — he was clearly emotional. He was clearly indignant. He was clearly angry.”

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who received Ford’s allegations in July, did nothing publicly with those charges until last week, days before the committee was scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh, who has denied all of the sexual assault allegations against him unequivocally, issued a passionate and angry defense of his good name and character after Ford’s participation in the hearing concluded.

Many mainstream media members described Ford’s emotional testimony in the morning as “credible,” but few gave Kavanaugh the same courtesy following his ordeal in the afternoon.

“I don’t believe Brett Kavanaugh is telling the entire truth … He told nontruths. He lied about things I don’t think he needed to lie about, but perhaps he felt as though he could not give any ground because he didn’t want to be found culpable for anything,” liberal activist Symone Sanders, a former national press secretary for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a CNN commentator, said on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”

“The most striking thing for me was his anger,” Sanders added. “The way he portrayed himself at the outset of this hearing today — he looked unhinged. He looked dismissive.”

Sanders insisted that Kavanaugh “did not come off as someone that wanted to come out and clear his name. He came out as someone who wanted to come out swinging, punching and hitting, and wanted to let you know he wasn’t going to take anybody’s stuff today, and I don’t think that [he] helped himself at all.”

Others were more charitable in their assessments. Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, for example, said on Fox News’ “Your World with Neil Cavuto” that Kavanaugh “came out swinging, as he needed to. This was a clear and almost ferocious defense of himself.”

Napolitano praised Kavanaugh, who he said “went through every allegation and presented a clear and convincing and believable and forceful defense. And politically, if Republicans were gloomy two hours ago, I don’t think they are now.”

Related: Media Loving Ford During Her Testimony; Will They Even Listen to Kavanaugh?

CNN contributor Margaret Hoover, who worked for former President George W. Bush, said she believes both Ford and Kavanaugh offered “credible” and “moving” testimonies.

“Not only do I find him very credible and moving — he was clearly emotional. He was clearly indignant. He was clearly angry,” Hoover said. “You have here two people, it seems to me, who have come and told their best truth, their best version of the truth, and now it’s up to people like us to try to determine what is that truth and what’s going to be the future of this country.”

Hoover added that she “found Brett Kavanaugh to be enormously compelling and enormously honest, and this is — this has been my position all along, this is the sense that I’ve had from him from the colleagues that worked in the Bush White House with me.”

NBC host Megyn Kelly said she felt for both Ford and Kavanaugh following their testimonies.

“[Americans] feel for him,” Kelly said. “And how can you not? I mean, she gets up there and gives this incredibly moving, emotional testimonial about what happened to her when she was 15, and then he gets up there and you can see the toll this has taken on him.”

“The toll of the behavior of the people who have been attacking him was evident in the emotions he showed just there,” she continued. “And he wasn’t going after her. He was going after the Democrats.”