Brett Kavanaugh Mentioned Beer 30 Times During the Senate Hearing. But Why?

During a grueling eight-hour hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford detailed the alleged assault she faced at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh while both in high school, opened up about moving out of her home because of the death threats she's received, and even managed to explain how the hippocampus works.

And what did Supreme Court judge nominee Brett Kavanaugh discuss when he finally took the stand? Beer, mostly. How he really, really, really likes it. So much so that he brought it up over 30 times during his testimony, according to a Buzzfeed count.

When we were first introduced to Kavanaugh, he was touted as a boy scout of sorts. A family man. A Christian. A virgin. But the version we met on Thursday was a beer-drinking, fun-loving guy, as Kavanaugh described his younger self (around the time of Ford's reported attack), as just a typical boy, who loved basketball, getting good grades, and going to the occasional party.

As he put it, “I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did."

“Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone.” Meaning, he was just a boy being a boy, doing boyish things—nothing more.

Driving home his preference for ales over harder liquors could have been a device to downplay the allegations that Kavanaugh was known as a heavy drinker. A college friend of his, Liz Swisher, recently told The Washington Post that “Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him. I watched him drink more than a lot of people. He’d end up slurring his words, stumbling. There’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. . . . But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”

How could the allegations against him be viable, if he was only casually drinking brewskis with his bros? is what Kavanaugh could have been hoping we'd wonder. Well, if he spends anywhere close to the amount of time he talks about beer actually drinking the damn beverage, let's just say gravity wouldn't be his friend.

But regardless of Kavanaugh's motives—there's one thing we can actually all agree on: Kavanaugh f*cking loves beer!

So in this spirit of bipartisan agreement, we've compiled a list—without comment—of the top 10 times Kavanaugh spoke about his beloved drink of choice while testifying:

1. "Listen to the people I’ve grown up with, and worked with, and played with, and coached with, and dated, and taught, and gone to games with, and had beers with."

2. "When I was in town, I spent much of my time working, working out, lifting weights, playing basketball, or hanging out and having some beers with friends as we talked about life, and football, and school and girls."

3. "The calendars show a few weekday gatherings at friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers."

4. "I drank beer with my friends."

5. "Sometimes I had too many beers."

6. "I liked beer."

7. "I still like beer."

8. "Anyone who's known me like a lot of these people behind me, have known me my whole life, know, you know, I got a weak stomach, whether it's with beer or with spicy food or anything."

9. “I like beer. I don’t know if you do. Do you like beer, Senator, or not? What do you like to drink?”

10. “No. . . . We drank beer and . . . so did, I think, the vast majority of people our age at the time. In any event, we drank beer and still do, so, whatever, yeah,”

Ah. Boys will be boys. Enjoy your beers this weekend.

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