Senator Lindsey Graham just couldn’t seem to bite his tongue during Thursday’s Kavanaugh hearing as #StopKavanaugh became the mantra well into the weekend on every social media outlet. South Carolina’s Republican senator has earned himself a remarkable number of retweets and shares coupled with enough media attention to last us into next year.
Highlighted on the news over the past couple of weeks, Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual incidents of sexual misconduct. Doctor Christine Blasey Ford, one of his alleged victims, took to the stand on September 27 to share her testimony. You could see the irritation on Senator Graham’s face right before he chose to bring the hearing to a halt with his explosive jabs aimed at the Democratic Party. He took time to accuse Democrats of plotting a scheme to snag the presidency in 2020. “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold his seat open, and hope you win the presidency in 2020.” He even went as far as to declare this event the “most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.”
It is no secret that Senator Graham is a close friend of President Trump. There’s no doubt he felt a little more powerful given his friendship with the President of the United States. There’s even the thought that he might have been sharing some of the same words Trump wished he could have said himself given his sexist and misogynistic tendencies. #StopKavanaugh was exactly the appropriate hashtag to create. A man who has no respect or remorse for women is a man we don’t need making decisions. “Ms. Ford has got a problem, and destroying Judge Kavanaugh’s life won’t fix her problem.” When a woman speaks about being a victim of sexual assault, what you don’t want to do is wag your chubby finger at her and tell her that she destroyed her abuser’s life. He then turns to address Jude Kavanaugh directly and says,” I can’t imagine what your family must be going through..You are just as much a victim as she is.” Graham really equated Kavanaugh’s level of victim to that of Ford’s.
Senator Lindsey Graham will go down as the man who exercised his right to free speech during a hearing in 2018 stating only derogatory and ignorant remarks at a woman who did not deserve it.
Free Press Free Speech 
What I find comical about all of this is that the Republicans stole Merrick Garland’s seat from President Obama. That appointment was never about Merrick Garland as it was about the Republicans grasping on to power. That sounds like an unethical sham to me.
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Sadly, just as the first amendment protects Ford’s right to testify, it protects Graham’s right to make outright sexist and cruel comments. However, as it relays to the media and the first amendment, I wonder what would have happened if a news outlet refused to air the footage of Graham’s comments, as to whether it would fall under the protection of their freedom of the press or the violation of his freedom of speech. I would like to think that because speech does not have a qualifier of amplification and he would be allow to say it in the hearing either way, it would fall under the protection of the news outlet. That being said, I would want to know why they refused to air his comments, and whether perhaps it went against journalistic ethics of being unbiased. (I believe it would be.)
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