With each day that passes, Republicans get more desperate and equally ridiculous. On Wednesday, some trial balloons began to rise suggesting that Kavanaugh would defend himself against the allegations by saying Dr. Blasey Ford was confused about the identity of the person assaulting her.
Thursday morning, POLITICO published an article suggesting that the rumor mill was on fire because of a tweet from Ed Whelan, head of the ironically named Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
In a tweet, Whelan first said that Kavanaugh would be "clearly vindicated" within a week. He went on to say that he expected Dianne Feinstein to apologize to Brett Kavanaugh before he sailed to confirmation.
POLITICO went on to report that "three people who have spoke to Whelan and Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo in recent days say they are '100 percent confident' they’ve obtained information that will exonerate Kavanaugh."
Thursday afternoon, Whelan dropped the second tranche of his "theory" in the form of a very long Twitter thread, which Maddow addressed at the end of her show. In the thread, he suggested that it was actually another classmate who somewhat resembled Kavanaugh, then went on to post blueprints of a home he guessed this other person lived in to show that her description of the house matched this house.
And then he posted a picture of the other person. And he named him. He is a middle school teacher.
This came from a guy who claims to be the head of an ETHICS Center. For real.
In a statement, Dr. Blasey Ford scoffed at Whelan's delusions. "I knew them both, and socialized with [the other classmate]," even visiting him in the hospital. “There is zero chance that I would confuse them.”
Rachel summed it up: "So for all those people who like Senator Orrin Hatch think that Christine Blasey Ford is just a mixed-up lady, Dr. Ford is saying tonight she definitively is not just mixed up about this. She didn't just confuse these two guys."
"And now some random middle schoolteacher who went to high school with Brett Kavanaugh is being blamed by the right for what she says Brett Kavanaugh did."
I'm guessing that middle school teacher might have a complaint against Ed Whelan. Apparently he did too, because he added to his tweet thread with some vague and weak disclaimers saying he was only supposing a thing, and not saying it actually happened.
I'm pretty sure that's not how things work.
Let's test his theory. Maybe it was this guy:
