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Right-Wing Media Shield Brett Kavanaugh Against Sexual Assault Allegations

Brett Kavanaugh at White House announcement of his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court (Image from White House broadcast)

Right-wing media has gone into overdrive defending Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh against allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman in high school.

Yesterday, it was reported that Christine Blasey Ford told the Washington Post that she had penned a letter to Sen. Diane Feinstein that contained allegations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her while drunk at a high school party. Kavanaugh has since hired an attorney and said he is willing to answer questions about the allegations.

When details about Ford’s accusations reached the press last week, right-wing media geared up to decimate her reputation and protect Kavanaugh at all costs. The episode is reminiscent of the way right-wing media defended alleged pedophile Roy Moore when accusations surfaced during his pursuit for Senate. Media figures defending Kavanaugh are attempting to portray Ford as an aggressive liberal activist, urging people to dismiss her claims altogether, and scraping for ways to possibly destroy her reputation.

Donald Trump Jr., the adult son of the president, mocked the accusations offhand in a post on his Instagram page.

(Screenshot / Instagram.com)

James Woods, an actor turned pro-Trump online-activist, wrote in a since-deleted tweet that Republicans must fight back against the accusations otherwise Democrats “will destroy them, one nomination, one election, one man at a time.”

Woods’ tweet was liked by the president’s son.

Candace Owens, communications director for the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA, demanded Republicans immediately confirm Kavanaugh.

Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump media personality who rose to prominence on the wave of the so-called “alt-right” but since attempted to publicly distance himself from the movement, suggested that Ford was not credible because she deleted her social media accounts before revealing her identity to the public. He called her accusations “straight activism.”

Dinesh D’Souza said the accusation was “depressingly familiar” and urged Republicans to “calmly ignore it” and “vote to confirm Kavanuagh.”

Fox News’ Tomi Lahren questioned whether Ford was a “victim or opportunist.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham cited a website run by a cohort of conspiracy theorists still claiming that former DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was shot and killed in Washington in 2016, may have been murdered for political reasons on the order of people close to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The article Ingraham shared suggests that because Kavanaugh’s mother allegedly ruled on a house foreclosure that affected the accuser’s parents, that the allegations against Kavanuagh are but petty revenge. These claims have worked their way around the right-wing media ecosystem, passing through more established right-wing sites, such as TownhallNewsmax and Gateway Pundit.

Breitbart writer Penny Starr dedicated a piece on the website to bolstering the fact that Ford told a newspaper that she had created a pink knitted hat shaped to look like a human brain after seeing “pussy hats” at the Women’s Marches in 2017.

(Screenshot / Breitbart.com)

Conservative columnist Erick Erickson went mask-off and admitted that since Kavanaugh is expected to undo Roe v. Wade, his confirmation was more consequential than the accusations brought against him, writing that liberals are “perfectly willing to destroy a man's reputation in order to keep destroying children.”