Democrats want to impeach President Donald Trump and may have a rocky road in getting there. So for the next move in their playbook, look no further than The New York Times’ debacle concerning Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the alleged sexual misconduct at Yale University decades ago during a dorm party when he was a student.
The two reporters of an article that ran over the weekend — as an excerpt from their forthcoming book — omitted the significant detail that the alleged female victim not only declined to be interviewed by the authors, but couldn’t even recall the incident in question.
Now it’s coming out that the detail was included in the writers’ original draft but that Times editors removed it in “the editing process.”
No matter who was responsible, the incident is shameful.
After the uproar, along came the revision and note from The Times over its poorly executed piece: “Editors’ Note: An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.”
Related: Kavanaugh ‘May Have a Case’ for Suing The Times for Libel, Says Legal Analyst
The Times ran its piece a few days after the third 2020 Democratic presidential debate.
Naturally, most of the top candidates for the nomination then promptly called for Kavanaugh’s “impeachment.”
The liberal media, in my view, have no sense of reality. Think that’s an overstatement? Recently, a Washington Post columnist talked about the need to “burn down the Republican Party.”
That outrageous statement goes far beyond the point that any journalist — or anyone, for that matter — should go. It’s essentially a threat against the Republican Party.
The columnist, Jennifer Rubin, said on an MSNBC segment in August, “What we should be doing is shunning these people. What we should be doing is shunning, shaming these people [as] a statement of moral indignation … It’s not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose. We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party,” she added. “Um, we have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.”
The buzz over that vitriol simply subsided. If a conservative had said that about the Democrat Party — well, pack up the laptop, friend, and take off.
The nation has been riding a vicious wave of political retaliation ever since the 2016 election. The losers are the American people. Their voices are snuffed out or muffled by the infighting in Congress and the almost-constant social media brouhahas.
Those on the far-Left seem particularly blunt and specific in the language they use. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) last year urged her supporters to go after Republicans over the policy that separated illegal immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border — a policy that the Trump administration since changed.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that [Trump] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” Waters insisted on June 23, 2018 in Los Angeles during a speech. “And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Many supporters took that advice — Trump administration employees and other top Republicans indeed have been hassled in a number of public incidents.
When people can’t go about their personal business with their families or friends because of political ties, that’s discrimination. If a conservative can’t speak at an event on an American college campus or put a campaign sign in his or her yard out of fear of retaliation, we’re in a precarious place.
Now look at what’s happening to Justice Brett Kavanaugh — all over again, in a repeat of how he was treated last summer during his bruising confirmation process.
Even with all the evidence of it, it’s still astonishing that left-wing bullying has taken root in America to the extent that it has. People should be able to have a variety of opinions and not be called “evil.” Yet right now, “leftism” assumes that a person is “racist” or despicable — or even far worse — if he or she holds opinions that are different than those held by the Left.
Vitriolic smokescreens, as I see it, are ruses to divert people’s attention from other matters — and to drum up animosity and anger well ahead of 2020.
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