The two most controversial authors in the country at the moment, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, appeared as guests on "The View" Tuesday. Before they got down into the weeds of the allegation against Brett Kavanaugh that is discussed at length in their book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, Meghan McCain pressed the authors over how and why a key fact was omitted from the New York Times essay that was printed this week.
"You guys left out a key detail," McCain said.
That detail was how the alleged victim refused to discuss the incident and told her friends that she doesn’t even recall it happening.
An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book's account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.
The Times issued a correction about the omission.
Editorial decisions like this, McCain noted, "is why people refer to the New York Times as the New York Slimes," and why people distrust the media at large.
The authors were appreciative of the chance to clear the record.
"There was no desire to withhold information from our readers," Kelly said. The Times essay, she explained, is an "adaption" of the book that "had to be edited for length and clarity."
Pogrebin added that in their editing process, the Times was concerned about naming the victim. In the sentence that had her name was also the tidbit that she doesn’t remember the incident. The whole sentence erroneously got removed.
Recommended
This, the authors admit, was "an oversight."
"We're very sorry that it happened," Kelly said.
But, McCain noted, it sounded like the authors were throwing the New York Times opinion board under the bus.
They insist that the final product was "a team effort."
“We thought" we had read it before it went to print, Pogrebin said.
"Did you read it right before it went to print?"
— Matt Wolking (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@MattWolking) September 17, 2019
"We thought we had."
These people don't know what they did last week but we are supposed to take seriously their account of rumors from 30 years ago about Brett Kavanaugh? pic.twitter.com/T3rYiUXoys
Join the conversation as a VIP Member