“What I’m here to do is tell you the truth,” he said after a pause, “and this allegation from 36 years ago is not —”
Ms. MacCallum jumped in to repeat her question, prompting a halting reply. “I think everyone is judged on their whole life,” Judge Kavanaugh said. “I’m a good person. I’ve led a good life. I’ve tried to do a lot of good for a lot of people. I am not perfect, I know that.”
The choice of Ms. MacCallum as interviewer raised some eyebrows. She works on the reporting side of Fox News as opposed to the commentariat, which includes pro-Trump voices like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. But critics pointed to supportive comments she made about Roger E. Ailes, the network’s former chairman, in the wake of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him in 2016. (Ms. MacCallum said in a tweet that she had been surprised by the allegations in the suit, which forced out Mr. Ailes.)
Since then, Ms. MacCallum, who joined Fox News in 2004 from CNBC, has been given a plum 7 p.m. time slot, and she is one of only two of the network’s news anchors who have interviewed Mr. Trump since he took office.
Her sit-down with Judge Kavanaugh impressed some skeptics. “Martha MacCallum is pressing Kavanaugh more than I would have guessed,” Brian Fallon, Hillary Clinton’s campaign press secretary, wrote on Twitter.
In some respects, Judge Kavanaugh’s on-air defense recalled another television event focused on a political figure’s sexual behavior.
In 1992, Bill and Hillary Clinton sat down with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” to address reports that Mr. Clinton, then a Democratic candidate for president, had carried on an affair with a woman named Gennifer Flowers. The wincingly personal nature of that interview was paralleled on Monday when Ms. MacCallum asked Judge Kavanaugh about rumors that he and his high school friends targeted women for sex at parties.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/business/media/brett-kavanaugh-fox-news-interview.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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