The Atlantic

Why the Kavanaugh Confirmation Still Haunts Us

The power of the stories is how normal they are.
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On Sunday, The New York Times published an excerpt of a new book on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh by Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. The snippet focused on the story of Deborah Ramirez—a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, who alleged he had exposed himself to her at a college party. While Kavanaugh angrily waved off reports of such behavior during his confirmation hearing, Pogrebin and Kelly wrote that they found both Ramirez’s claim, and Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of a drunken attempted assault by a high-school-aged Kavanaugh, to be credible.

That was all it took. The president punched out tweet after tweet demanding retribution for the “lies” told about the justice. By

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