As soon as Thursday’s marathon Senate Judiciary Committee hearing wrapped up, the president of the United States was ready to weigh in.
Trump calls Kavanaugh’s testimony “powerful, honest, and riveting.” He doesn’t mention Ford.
The president reiterates his support for his Supreme Court pick right after the marathon Senate hearing.
Photo by John Moore/Getty Images
Jen Kirby is a senior foreign and national security reporter at Vox, where she covers global instability.
“Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him,” President Donald Trump tweeted. “His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting.”
Trump also took up the line of attack that Republican senators, and Brett Kavanaugh himself, used throughout the hearing: that the allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh are merely a Democratic tactic to foil his nomination to the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh has consistently denied the allegations against him, and he angrily defended himself during his testimony. If Republican lawmakers had any doubts going in, as they apologized to Kavanaugh and attacked their Democratic colleagues, it seemed clear that at least most of the GOP had lined up behind the Trump’s pick once again during the hearing.
Trump praised Kavanaugh in his tweet, but he did not mention the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school gathering more than 30 years ago. Ford testified before the committee prior to Kavanaugh, facing questions from Democrats as well as an outside prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, whom Republicans brought in to question Ford on their behalf.
Ford said she was “100 percent” sure that Kavanaugh had assaulted her.
Trump’s own strategy to deflect sexual assault allegations against him has been to “deny, deny, deny,” and Kavanaugh followed that playbook during his testimony on Thursday.
At a press conference in New York on Wednesday, Trump called the allegations against Kavanaugh a “big, fat con job,” and said that similar “false accusations” against him had shaped his stance on Kavanaugh.
“It does impact my opinion, you know why? I had a lot of false charges made against me,” Trump said. “I know friends that have had false charges. People want fame, they want money, they want whatever. So when I see it, I view it differently than somebody sitting home watching television.”
Trump did say at the press conference that he would pay attention to Ford’s testimony and that he wanted to hear her out. “I’m going to see what’s said,” he told reporters Wednesday. “It’s possible that they’ll be convincing.”
His tweet Thursday night shows his mind is now made up — and it hints that he’s confident Republican lawmakers’ minds are too.
See More:
By Zack Beauchamp
By Andrew Prokop, Li Zhou and 5 more
