MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Wednesday that the mainstream media’s one-sided coverage of the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh gave President Trump an opening to further divide the nation.
“Donald Trump divides every day, in a way that is unbecoming of a president, but also because the media has given Donald Trump a massive opening because they have been so one-sided on this story that it allows him to light dynamite and blow the whole thing up,” said Scarborough, who has been a vocal critic of the president and Kavanaugh.
{mosads}Trump on Tuesday ripped into Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding her accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party in 1982 when the two of them were high school students.
“How did you get home? ‘I don’t remember,’ ” Trump said, mocking Ford’s testimony. “How’d you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know.’ “
“They want to destroy people,” he said, presumably referring to the Democrats who have led the opposition to Kavanaugh. “These are really evil people.”
Scarborough said the mainstream media gave the president the opportunity to make those comments by not covering the flaws in Ford’s testimony.
“Quite a few people that we talked to, a lot of them I think were registered Democrats, raised questions about Dr. Ford’s story,” Scarborough said. “Now that’s something — in 24-7 news coverage, at least in mainstream media — you never hear anybody talk about. They won’t talk about it.”
“They feel if anybody sticks their neck out and says that they disbelieve any part of her story, if they talk about how there are no corroborating witnesses, well, they’ll get absolutely slammed,” he added. “The media coverage of this has been so one-sided, it has been so biased. There has been the presumption from the very beginning every single allegation made against the judge was true.”
Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge, has denied her allegation, as well as those of two other women who have come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct.
Scarborough compared the current situation to the political environment leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
“Nobody would even consider the possibility that Donald Trump might win, so they were shocked by it,” he said.