Parkland Dad Confronts Brett Kavanaugh, Plays The Victim

Fred Guttenberg was among the parents that tragically lost a child in the Parkland high school massacre earlier this year. Fred’s 14-year-old daughter Jamie was killed in the shooting.

Like some of the student activists at Parkland, Fred immediately began advocating for the same kind of supposedly “common sense” gun control policies that the students did. While most of his political comments have centered around gun control, he does share the generically left-wing stances one would expect a gun control advocate to support.

He appeared at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing yesterday, and as the session convened for a lunch break, rushed up to approach Kavanaugh. “Put out my hand to introduce myself as Jaime Guttenberg’s dad,” he wrote on Twitter. “He pulled his hand back, turned his back to me and walked away. I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence.”

Below is footage of the incident from two angles:

And it’s already resulted in an “iconic” photo which purports to show Kavanaugh deliberately ignoring Fred, when in reality, Kavanaugh likely just thought he was being accosted by a stranger.

Now, let’s give some context. Before the hearing, Fred was tweeting about how his goal was to prevent Kavanaugh from being confirmed as a SCOTUS justice. Had Kavanaugh actually even known who Fred was, he’d probably have been less likely to give him a handshake. And given the dozens of protesters that were arrested yesterday, is it really surprising that Kavanaugh was keeping his distance from strangers, or that he’d have security personnel that intervened?

Fred had also accused Kavanaugh of not caring about 9/11 victims in the past.

Parts of Fred’s narrative aren’t consistent with reality either. Fred appeared on CNN and tweeted that Sen. Diane Feinstein introduced himself to Kavanaugh and that it wasn’t intervention from security that escorted Kavanaugh away. As everyone saw on the video of the incident, both statements are obviously false.

There’s a 0% chance the Fred didn’t accost Kavanaugh without the goal of causing a scene in some regard that could be politicized. While it’s extremely unlikely the Kavanaugh deliberately ignored him because of who he is, Fred certainly is happy the public thinks that’s what happened.