Well, in case the White House’s position on the sexual assault allegations leveled against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh needed to get even more ambiguous, Kellyanne Conway revealed to CNN on Sunday morning that she was the victim of sexual assault.
During an interview with Jake Tapper, Conway said this:
It’s unclear whether Conway is wholly cognizant of just how important her claim is in the context of the national conversation around unreported sexual assaults, but suffice to say this is going to be the subject of vociferous debate in the days and weeks ahead.
Tapper was obviously taken aback and did his best to express empathy for Conway while simultaneously pointing out the obvious, which is that she works for a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct.
Up until last Thursday, the President exercised what for him counts as restraint with regard to the allegations against Kavanaugh, but unable to contain himself, he eventually took to Twitter to demand that Christine Blasey Ford produce evidence of the alleged attack. Subsequently, the President said this about Deborah Ramirez:
That’s obviously tasteless, as were comments he delivered during a wild solo press conference on Tuesday that found the President questioning the integrity of George Washington and berating reporters who peppered him with questions about his own alleged sexual harassment.
For those who missed it, here’s what Trump said when asked whether the fact that he is himself the subject of similar sexual misconduct allegations might render him unable to address the Kavanaugh situation from an objective point of view:
Clearly, that left something to be desired from the perspective of women who are the victims of sexual assault.
After Thursday’s testimony from Dr. Ford, Trump reportedly found her credible, and the President has, of course, agreed to countenance an FBI investigation into at least two claims against Kavanaugh.
Conway’s Sunday comments add a new dimension to this national debate.
To be absolutely clear, it is in no way, shape or form appropriate for anyone to ascribe to Conway ulterior motives. That is, there will almost invariably be someone (and probably a lot of someones) who suggest that Conway is making this up in an effort to somehow mitigate the rather challenging optics around Trump effectively overseeing a probe into sexual assault allegations against his own SCOTUS nominee.
Those someones will not include me.
Any such suggestions would be unfair to Conway and to the extent she decides to make public the details of her assault claims, one would certainly hope that liberals will be just as sympathetic to her as they are to every other woman who has come forward over the past year.
That said, it is entirely fair to ask Conway to reconcile the empathy she must by definition feel with the likes of Dr. Ford with the fact that on Saturday night, Donald Trump said this at a rally:
Nothing further.
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Police report or it didn’t happen.