MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle drops the hammer on conservative offering excuses for Kavanaugh's drinking

A conservative columnist insisted Brett Kavanaugh might have been simply boasting as a teenager when he wrote a letter describing his drinking exploits -- but MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle and her panelists weren't impressed.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens dismissed a 1983 letter written by the future Supreme Court nominee to his friends about an upcoming "Beach Week" vacation as youthful boasting, but other guests said it proved Kavanaugh had lied under oath about his drinking.

"That letter's proof of perjury, disqualifies him from the court," said Mark Thompson, host of Sirius XM's "Make It Plain" radio program. "It is proof. He signed it Bart. When he was asked, 'Who is Bart?' he said, 'You'll have to ask Mark Judge.' That's a fact. He was asked, 'Are you Bart?' and he wouldn't acknowledge he was Bart. It's signed Bart -- that's perjury. How is that not perjury?"

Stephens said the letter wasn't necessarily an accurate depiction of Kavanaugh's drinking habits, although it matches up with accounts given by former classmates and friends.

"I remember when I was a teenager, and I remember boasting about drinking much more than I actually did," Stephens said. "These letters are not dispositive. 'I was so drunk, I was so wasted' -- I wasn't, and so we should take these letters with a grain of salt."

Thompson said there were other examples from Kavanaugh's testimony where he made false or misleading statements about his work for the Bush White House, but Ruhle said his testimony about past drinking was just as relevant.

"Take the letters with a grain of salt, and then when Brett Kavanaugh gets up and testifies, you know what he could say, 'You know what, like every other dude in high school I was full of it, I talked a bigger game than I actually had,'" Ruhle said. "But, alas, he didn't, he said he just played basketball and went to church."