Brett Kavanaugh 's swearing-in to the Supreme Court of the United States Monday night came with an unusual component: An apology from the president on behalf of a bitterly divided nation.

“I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure," the president said. "Those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation. Not a campaign of political and personal destruction based on lies and deception. What happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency and due process.

"[In] our country, a man or a woman, must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty," President Trump continued. "And with that, I must state that you, sir, under historic scrutiny were proven innocent. Thank you.”

You wouldn't think our leaders would need to publicly defend the presumption of innocence, and that it would be controversial when they do, but that's where we are.

Politically, of course, this whole thing turned out to be an unexpected debacle for Democrats. The lessons of their defeat are pretty clear. Creepy porn lawyers make bad national spokesmen. Screaming mobs of child activists scare normal people, who are watching at home. Wild allegations of gang rape tend to be counterproductive.

In other words, it is, in fact, possible to go too far, and they did. It's not a complicated message. And yet, none of it seems obvious at this point to Democrats.

The activist left has learned an entirely different set of lessons from the Kavanaugh experience. They now seem to believe:

The Supreme Court is a sham.

The Constitution is meaningless.

The Electoral College must go.

Only a country divided into warring tribes can be ruled effectively.

If we can't control it, let's burn it down.

That is the message they've internalized.

Activists gathered at the Supreme Court reacted after the Kavanaugh vote on Saturday afternoon. What we saw was not a clip from a zombie movie. It's Washington D.C. 2018.

The children of affluence were raging, and the rage continued on cable news and social media. "We've got to eliminate the Electoral College," they chirped in unison. "White men are bad."

The message was obviously coordinated. Important media figures seemed to be saying exactly the same things at exactly the same time. They were repeating talking points from the Democratic Party whose interest they faithfully serve.

For generations, conservatives called this “the liberal media.” But that's not quite right. These are not liberals. They're not people who believe in free speech or transparency or due process or challenging corporate power or any other recognizable liberal value.

These are political party people. They are hacks and joiners and drones. They read the latest pronouncements from the Central Committee like they're scripture. They repeat whatever they are told.

They are robots.

"Shut up, Wyoming, nobody cares what you think." That's the new message from the Party that pretends to care about the powerless.

But then the left has never been big on self-awareness. Finance billionaire Tom Steyer, one of the Democratic Party's biggest donors, is on a new crusade against - and prepare now for a blast of hot irony - "rich, entitled white men."

“A group of very rich, very entitled white men wanted to tell the rest of the country we are going to have our way," he railed recently. "And if you don't like it, that is too darn bad.”

Yes. That's what Tom Steyer's against: People like himself, who behave like he does. Let us know when you stop snickering and then think about what Tom Steyer is saying here.

He's saying Brett Kavanaugh is not on the Supreme Court because the majority of the U.S. Senate voted for him as the Constitution prescribes.

What's actually happening, says Tom Steyer, is that Kavanaugh was installed by a specific racial group in order to hurt and disempower every other racial group in America.

This is tribal warfare posing as democracy and your tribe is losing. That's what Tom Steyer is telling you. Now, as a factual matter, this is insane.

It's the kind of lunacy that would have gotten you booted off a cable channel five years ago. It's also a lie and it's dangerous. Responsible people do not talk like this. And yet, suddenly it is everywhere on the left, and not just among the professional wackos pounding on the front door of the Supreme Court.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson’s monologue on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Oct. 8, 2018.