Several interviewers were considered, the leading contenders being Jan Crawford at CBS and Martha MacCallum at Fox News (a cable channel for which one of this book’s authors is a contributor). They wanted someone who would conduct a serious interview but who would be fair and let Kavanaugh speak—neither a series of softball questions nor a game of “gotcha.”
MacCallum won out, in part because, as much as the team respected Crawford’s integrity, some worried that CBS’s editors would slice and dice the interview to make Kavanaugh look bad. Also, the Fox News audience included conservatives whose support needed to be shored up. The interview would be broadcast in the seven p.m. hour, but clips would air throughout the day, and it would be discussed throughout Fox’s prime-time lineup. As soon as the interview was announced, the major media tried to write it off as a joke. The caustic reaction of Margaret Sullivan, a media columnist for the Washington Post, was typical: “Female interviewer, check. Fox News, check. Bill Shine approved, check. When an ‘exclusive interview’ promises to be a challenge-free infomercial.”30 Dismissing Ashley’s presence, she wrote, “Wife at your side, check,”31 and “Unquestioning adoration would probably be the right look.”32
In fact, MacCallum asked tough and probing questions—eliciting, for instance, the revelation that Kavanaugh “did not have sexual intercourse or anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter”—and she won praise for her interview.
Kavanaugh’s own performance was hotly debated. He did not seem comfortable, and his answers came off as over-rehearsed. Shortly before the interview, a few members of the White House team met with him at the house where he was staying. At the moot the previous week, he had seemed natural and righteously indignant, but now, they noticed, he seemed cautious and over-prepared. “The Bushies had gotten to him,” said one of the White House advisers.
When the White House team stopped holding moots with Kavanaugh, a kitchen cabinet of sorts—including friends who ran communications efforts for President Bush—took its place, providing advice and guidance as he prepared for the next round of hearings. The White House team found Kavanaugh’s forceful denials convincing, but many in this group favored a softer, more sympathetic—even hand-wringing—approach, one that emphasized his relationships with women and affirmed that accusers have to be taken seriously. Kavanaugh himself was memorizing lines that were perfectly reasonable sentiments but would come across as verbal tics during the interview. More than ten times he returned to some variation of the phrase, “I’m just asking for a fair process where I can be heard and defend my integrity.”33 The scripting from advisors extended to encouraging Ashley to wear a necklace with a cross, a suggestion she bristled at and declined.
The White House team realized what was happening and tried to encourage more of what they had seen the previous week, but the interview was looming. It was filmed in a Washington hotel, which was supposed to provide a warm, personal atmosphere without invading the privacy of the Kavanaughs’ own living room. But the room was a disappointment. It was so unattractive, in fact, that someone ran to buy plants so the setting wouldn’t be completely lifeless. The interview was awkward for the typically private Kavanaughs, forced to discuss intimate issues on national television in a room full of cameramen and producers.
Whatever its shortcomings, the interview served its purpose, even if key senators found Kavanaugh a bit robotic. It put him back in the news on his own terms, reminded the media that the man they were accusing of rape was a human being instead of a caricature, and taught him how to respond more effectively. The kinder, gentler Kavanaugh could take him only so far. McGahn would remind him that while he may have worked for Bush, he was a Trump nominee. And Trump fights. For his part, Trump tweeted out his support of Kavanaugh before, during, and after the interview.
Kavanaugh was vexed by the image of him as a crazy drunk. In his mind, he had been a top athlete and a top student who liked to drink on the weekend. He also resented his friends’ being dragged into the controversy. People who wanted to score points on Kavanaugh were painting a caricature of privileged and out-of-control prep school boys with no regard for the collateral damage to innocent people.
It was painful for him to see Georgetown Prep’s reputation unfairly tarnished by ideological zealots in the