Everywhere America is watching Dr. Christine Blasey Ford today.
That’s what the Assistant Managing Editor of The New York Times said today on Twitter, in response to a video taken on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan.
“Sound waves from NYSE trading post TVs resound in unison at higher than usual decibel levels as traders watched Christine Blasey Ford testify,” tweeted Brad Smith, a reporter from a business and tech news site that broadcasts from the floor of the NYSE. “Could decipher nearly every word of the hearing anywhere I walked, competing only with ringing phones at times.”
It’s not just Wall Street traders watching.
A New York Times Opinion columnist “admits” he couldn’t watch, and yet saw many people in a local park watching on their cell phones. “I think this is a bigger deal than the GOP ever imagined,” Paul Krugman tweets:
Another NY Times columnist detailed the status of passengers aboard his airplane:
CNN posted this photo, taken by Zette Emmons aboard a JetBlue flight, that shows every TV screen tuned to the Blasey Ford hearing.
One man responded with a photo of him aboard a different flight watching:
And another photo aboard a plane:
A WNYC reporter took this photo of a couple on a New York City subway:
The Washington Post notes that Dr. Blasey Ford’s “testimony — about an alleged sexual assault in the early 1980s by Brett M. Kavanaugh, now a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court — transfixed Americans in coffee shops, subway cars and Capitol hallways.”
The Post adds, “in Milwaukee, a small group of people — including a few nurses just off the night shift and still in scrubs — watched the hearings at Coffeetails, a coffee shop that sells liquor until 11 a.m.”
When the hearing began and Ford’s face first flashed on the screen, the reaction was immediate.
“She looks terrified,” said one man at the bar.
“Worse than deer in headlights,” replied another.
“What do you expect,” answered a woman nearby.
A few miles away from the Capitol in Washington — a city so odd that its bars treat congressional hearings like bowl games, with early openings and drink specials — Shaw’s Tavern opened at 10 a.m., an hour earlier than usual. It offered bottomless mimosas.
Yes, everywhere America is watching Dr. Christine Blasey Ford today.
And the GOP is about to rue the day they chose to not believe her.
Image by Michael Li via Twitter