All day today the Senate Judiciary Committee has been examining the veracity of allegations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Federal Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, sexually assaulted her during a party when they were in high school.
Dr. Ford, in very compelling testimony, said she was 100 percent certain that it was 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, drunk, who forced her onto a bed and attempted to rape her. That assault was only the first that she would undergo, as she and her family have been the subject of vicious threats to the point where they've had to leave their home for more secure locations.
Judge Kavanaugh, also in emotional and sometimes tearful testimony, forcefully denied that he ever did that -- not to Dr. Ford or to anyone else, ever. At the end of the hearing, he said he was 100 percent certain of that -- and swore so "before God."
Kavanaugh said he and his family have undergone a terrible assault as well. For him, he said, it was an assault on his reputation and a lifetime of honorable achievement. To say he was emotional is an understatement. At times, he was belligerent. Angry. It was obvious he was playing to his audience at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Republican senators assaulted Democratic senators and vice versa. Republicans, the 11 men on the committee, blasted the Democrats for sitting on the Ford charges for weeks until just before the confirmation vote was to be taken. They expressed sympathy to Dr. Ford, but in the end they tried to prove she was either mistaken or a liar.
But afraid of how it would look for her to be questioned by 11 male Senators, they turned over that role to a hired female prosecutor from Arizona. They were just afraid of "the optics" of it all. But then when Kavanaugh testified, the GOP senators took over the questioning, often viciously attacking the Democrats.
Meanwhile, Democratic senators denied GOP charges of playing politics, trying to kill the Kavanaugh nomination at any cost for political reasons. They said the Ford information was not revealed earlier because Dr. Ford wanted her identity kept confidential. They assaulted the Republicans for refusing to delay the confirmation vote until the FBI could investigate Dr. Ford's statement.
The entire incident really amounted to an assault on the Senate itself and the process of advise and consent when judges are nominated by the President. The fact is that today the lines are drawn and the divisions among people and parties have never been deeper.
If Kavanaugh is confirmed and then Ford's charges, or those of two other women who have made similar accusations, are proven to be true, it will be too late. We will have a confirmed sexual predator sitting as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
That will be an assault on us all.