NYT Reporters' Kavanaugh Book Flops, Selling Only a Few Thousand Copies

Jim Treacher | 5:00 PM on October 04, 2019

Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, officiates at the swearing-in of Judge Britt Grant to take a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2018 in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

If you weren’t paying attention three weeks ago when the New York Times tried to bring back the smears against Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, here’s the short version: It didn’t work. The story fell apart. The alleged victim of the alleged attack that was pushed by the NYT says it never even happened. All the caterwauling among our political and media elites, all the calls for Kavanaugh to be impeached, were for naught. It was a nothingburger on a nonexistent bun.

But at least it sold a lot of books, right? After all, that was the whole point of manufacturing all that outrage. Two NYT reporters published a book called The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, and that insane media frenzy was part of the promotional push. How’d that work out for them?

Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner:

The latest book on Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a critical biography from two New York Times reporters that made new sexual assault charges that were immediately undermined, has suffered an epic sales crash, according to publishing insiders.

Expected to sell at least 10,000-12,000 in the first two weeks and propel The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation onto the newspaper’s bestseller hardcover list, it has sold about a third of that in the first two weeks.

A publishing source provided the latest BookScan numbers, which can account for about 80% of sales. That number is 3,120.

Yikes. By contrast, Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, which is critical of the 2018 smear attempt on Kavanaugh, has sold 100,000 copies since it was published in July. I’m no math expert, but that’s a lot more, right?

The authors of the latest failed Kavanaugh smear, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, were all over TV pushing the book. They even went on The View. And yet they only sold a few thousand copies. Apparently, Americans get enough lies on cable news and don’t feel like paying $15-20 more to see them written down.

At least now all those remaining books can be recycled into something more useful. Like toilet paper.