During his rambling and chaotic press conference on Wednesday, President Donald Trump admitted that his personal experience of being accused of sexual misconduct has made him more inclined to believe Brett Kavanaugh’s denials.
“It does impact my opinion,” Trump told reporters. “You know why? Because I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me.”
In the moments before Christine Blasey Ford was set to finally testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday morning, Fox News host Chris Wallace opened up about how some very different personal experience has made him more sympathetic towards Kavanaugh’s accusers.
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“I think it’s important that we distinguish between what’s legitimate and serious and what clearly seems less so,” Wallace said, as the countdown clock ticked down to the official testimony start time. Then he began talking about the difficult conversations this story has brought out in his own family over the past couple of weeks.
“Two of my daughters have told me stories that I had never heard before about things that happened to them in high school,” Wallace said, without going into specifics. “And hadn’t told their parents, I don’t know if they’d told their friends, certainly hadn’t told the police.”
“They weren’t as serious as the allegations against Kavanaugh,” he continued, “but the point is that there are teenage girls who don’t tell stories to a lot of people and then it comes up. And I don’t think we can disregard that. I don’t think we can disregard Christine Blasey Ford and the seriousness of this. I think that would be a big mistake.”
Those words from Wallace did not address Trump directly, but they nonetheless served as a sharp rebuke of his arguments over the past week questioning why it took so long for Ford to come forward with her allegations against Kavanaugh.
During a break that followed the first 90 minutes of the hearing, Wallace said on Fox of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, “This was extremely emotional, extremely raw and extremely credible.”
“Nobody could listen to her and talk about the assault and the impact it had on her life and not have your heart go out to her. And she obviously was traumatized by an event,” he continued. Referring specifically to the bizarre format of the hearing, Wallace added, “This is a disaster for the Republicans.”
