At a panel discussion Friday night, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski expressed concern about the way her medium covered the accusations made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
“For 24/7, I watched cable and network morning TV on this issue and I watched guest after guest after guest, except for watching Fox, which was the opposite, convict Brett Kavanaugh,” she said at The New Yorker Festival.
Specifically, Brzezinski said that TV hosts did not challenge guests who expressed certainty that the women who have accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, including Christine Blasey Ford, are telling the truth.
“Everybody was making the leap, and I think Democrats did it and I think members of the media did it, and I think it’s destructive, and I think it actually whittled away at our credibility in the long term,” she said.
Addressing the backlash she received for a comment she made about White House counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, who revealed herself as a victim of sexual assault last Sunday, Brzezinski said she spoke as a survivor when she encouraged Conway to be “the Fabergé egg” she said Ford has been treated as.
Brzezinski revealed that she was “violently assaulted” as a teenager. “I don’t let it own me, and I have a different reaction as anyone else,” she said.
She also attacked Conway, saying, “I really have never thought about her until this week because I don’t consider her someone even worth putting on the show.”
Her co-host and partner, Joe Scarborough, lambasted President Donald Trump as a “coward” and criticized Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake for voting in favor of Kavanaugh’s nomination. (He also said he doesn’t think Trump will run for a second term.)
“I’m really tired of hearing Jeff Flake’s speeches,” he said. “I’m really tired of looking at his mournful face. … I’m ready for him to actually vote to stop something.”
The pair were then forced to watch a video of Saturday Night Live parody them. Brzezinski said that Scarborough used to be portrayed as the zany one of the pair, but “now I’m the crazy one.”
