‘This Matters’: CNN’s Brooke Baldwin Delivers Emotional Tribute to Christine Blasey Ford

In the last moments of her CNN show, at the end of a very long week in which the nation heard Christine Blasey Ford’s detailed memories of how Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulted her in high school, Brooke Baldwin shared a message with viewers: “This matters.”

“What we witnessed in that hearing was nothing short of extraordinary,” Baldwin said. “Put the partisan politics and the insults and the spin to one side. I want to mark this pivotal moment in American history when sexual assault, something that doesn’t often elicit more than a shameful whisper, is thrust into the open on national television.”

“This matters,” she continued. “Yesterday morning, the nation watched as Christine Blasey Ford shared her truth.”

Baldwin said that “as it played out” she “saw women here at work in tears” including one “young woman in my office wiping her eyes as she felt compelled to... share her truth with me.”

Turning more personal, Baldwin’s voice broke as she said, “We all have our stories. The spiked drink, waking up on the cold tiles of a hotel bathroom floor. The uncertainty, the shame, the thought, ‘I must have somehow brought this on myself.’ The silence, distrust, and invalidation.”

“This is a pivotal moment in America for all of us,” she said. “This matters. This moment is bigger than politics. It's about mothers and fathers raising boys to become men. What good comes of all of this? What are we going to learn? It's a generational opportunity to better ourselves in how we relate to each other as women and men.”

“This matters the most,” she concluded.