Kavanaugh Book Rocks Charts, But You Wouldn't Know It by Watching Mainstream Media
If you were watching mainstream media over the last month, you’re probably under the impression that the top-selling nonfiction book that wades into the political and social spheres would have been E. Jean Carroll’s “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.”
That, of course, is the book where she accuses Donald Trump of having sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.
Well, according to Amazon, on Friday morning, that volume sat at 21,346 among paid bestsellers. Meanwhile, “Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court” by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino was No. 93 at the same time. It was a No. 1 hit on Amazon even before its July 9 release date and, as of Friday morning, was at No. 3 on The New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.
And yet, almost nobody is covering the book about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the attendant controversies around his confirmation to the high court.
“Despite breakout success and its thorough coverage of the Kavanaugh confirmation, CNN, MSNBC, AP, Washington Post, NYT and CBS have all turned a blind eye to the book,” The Daily Caller reported Thursday.
“The New York Times’ first mention of our exhaustively reported and heavily researched book about the most important thing that happened to the country last year was when they had to place us on their best seller list,” Hemingway told the outlet.
“It is a sad reminder that many in the media are not interested in journalism but progressive advocacy.”
The problem, in case you hadn’t guessed, stems from the fact that Hemingway is best known as a contributor to The Federalist, a conservative publication, and Severino is with the conservative Judicial Crisis Network.
The book’s revelations are also uncomfortable for certain corners of the media. For instance, classmates described Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford as a heavy drinker during her high school years, accounts that seem at odds with her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Female classmates and friends at area schools recalled a heavy drinker who was much more aggressive with boys than they were,” Hemingway and Severino wrote in the book.
“‘If she only had one beer’ on the night of the alleged assault, a high school friend said, ‘then it must have been early in the evening.’ Her contemporaries all reported the same nickname for Ford, a riff on her maiden name and a sexual act.”
“They also debated whether her behavior in high school could be attributed to the trauma of a sexual assault,” the authors noted. “If it could, one of them said, then the assault must have happened in seventh grade.”
The book also revealed that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom Kavanaugh replaced, had been consulted about possible Supreme Court nominations by the Trump campaign back in 2016.
“The team talked to judges for whom candidates had clerked and to those who had clerked with them. [Don] McGahn was particularly interested in what candidates had been like in their mid-twenties, the stage of life when he believed most people’s views solidified,” they wrote.
“Justice Kennedy was eager to help, offering the names of at least six former clerks who were in his ‘top five.’ Kavanaugh was one of them.
“While Kennedy called his other clerks good or excellent, he tended to describe Kavanaugh as brilliant.”
In an interview with RealClearPolitics, Hemingway described how the authors discovered, during the research for the book, that “the White House actually was prepared” for a late-game attack on Kavanaugh, and “that was reflected from the way they handled the process going well back.”
“They actually had heard rumors from some more liberal political activists — or judicial activists — here in town that there might be a roll-out of a strategy of some kind,” Hemingway told the outlet. “They didn’t have the particulars, but they weren’t totally surprised. So when it comes out at the last minute, people who know their Supreme Court nomination history, or who are kind of aware of politics, they weren’t that surprised. We didn’t know what it would be, but we knew it would be something.
“That’s one thing — nobody realized how absolutely intense and excruciating the next few weeks would be. And that was more because it just seemed like up was down and reality was turned on its head,” Hemingway continued.
“You had facts, you had things that seemed like there’s nothing here to support these allegations, but the media would present it as if there was a ton of stuff to support it. And you would have exculpatory evidence, and they would ignore it.”
Perhaps you can guess why the book has been blacklisted by the media.
“We are thrilled that the book is not just a bestseller, but already making an impact,” Severino told The Daily Caller. “There is still a real hunger out there to understand what happened during the national circus that was the Kavanaugh confirmation and how to prevent it in the future.”
Before I say this, let me assure you I’m not getting paid to advertise this book. But from extensive excerpts, it’s clear that “Justice on Trial” is a thorough account of how the Kavanaugh hearings devolved into a Kafkaesque nightmare — and how the media played a role in that process.
I suppose it’s little wonder that the media doesn’t want to acknowledge their role in this whole mess, even as the book has become the surprise hit of the summer.
Enjoy another round of E. Jean Carroll interviews, then, as her book slips through the 50,000s on the Amazon rankings. You can rest assured that what America is actually reading right now is going to go unreported in the media.
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