Brett Kavanaugh made a now-unfortunate joke about his high school days in 2015

Brett Kavanaugh makes an unfortunate joke in 2015
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/CNN)

When you're giving a speech, a joke can help win over your audience and add leavening to a weighty subject. Sometimes those jokes don't age well, though, like pretty much any joke involving a racial epithet. Or jokes about your high school's lifelong code of omertà when, a few years later, you're a Supreme Court nominee credibly accused of a violent and clumsy attempted rape in high school and your high school friend, the only witness to the alleged incident, says he has no memory of it happening.

On Tuesday, CNN unearthed a video of Judge Brett Kavanaugh making such a joke. "Fortunately we had a good saying we've held firm to to this day," Kavanaugh said in a March 2015 speech at Catholic University of America's Columbus Law School: "What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep. That's been a good thing for all of us, I think." The joke is in the first part of the clip, and CNN's panel discusses it and the broader Kavanaugh imbroglio for a few minutes after that. Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.