“YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW:” MEGYN KELLY WARNS NBC STAFF WHO DEFENDED TOM BROKAW.

She’ll catch hell for this even though she says she’s skeptical of the allegations against Brokaw too. But she’s right. In the end, all you can say of a friend’s behavior behind closed doors is “He doesn’t seem like the type,” which is worth next to nothing. Does no one remember all of the Foxies who sneered when Gretchen Carlson first accused Roger Ailes of harassment?

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The risk isn’t that they’ll end up being personally embarrassed if more dirt comes out on him; the risk is that there are women who are right now weighing whether to speak up about him and suddenly find themselves discouraged because the most prominent progressive female stars at the network are laying out the case for skepticism preemptively. If you’ve been harassed, you expect the man who harassed you to call you a liar. You don’t expect liberal heartthrob Rachel Maddow to signal you’re probably a liar before you’ve even opened your mouth.

What do you do in this situation if you’re Maddow, then? You don’t want to let a friend be hanged in the court of public opinion when all of the evidence you have on him suggests he’s not guilty. But you don’t want to be Hannity either, assuming that you have all of the evidence, period, when you don’t. #MeToo is a witch hunt with the twist that some of the accused really are witches.

That wouldn’t be first time that was proven true of a so-called “witch hunt.”