Senators hit out at Trump for mocking Kavanaugh accuser

THREE wavering Republican senators have lambasted President Donald Trump for mocking a woman who has claimed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the 1980s.

The response to Mr Trump’s scoffing at Christine Blasey Ford came as politicians awaited results of a revived FBI background check on accusations of sexual misconduct by Mr Kavanaugh in high school and college.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the chamber will vote on Mr Kavanaugh later this week, and the conservative jurist’s fate is in the hands of a handful of undecided Republican and Democratic senators.

At a political rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Mr Trump mimicked Ms Ford’s responses at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week at which she recounted Mr Kavanaugh’s alleged attack on her when both were in high school.

The audience laughed as Mr Trump, at times inaccurately,

Under-fire: President Donald Trump

recounted what he described as holes in her evidence.

“I had one beer — that’s the only thing I remember,” Mr Trump said.

On NBC’s Today show, Republican Senator Jeff Flake said that ridiculing “something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right”.

Mr Flake added: “I wish he hadn’t done it. It’s kind of appalling.”

Separately, Senator Susan Collins told reporters: “The president’s comments were just plain wrong.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski said they were “wholly inappropriate and in my view unacceptable”.

Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a tweet that people can “decide who to believe” but everyone should stop the “personal attacks” against Ms Ford, Mr Kavanaugh and their families.

Mr Trump’s aggressive criticism of Ms Ford seems to reflect the sentiments of some of his conservative supporters.

But it raises questions about how such words will affect five senators — all moderates — whose votes on Mr Kavanaugh will be decisive.

Besides Mr Flake and Ms Collins, Republican Lisa Murkowski and Democrats Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp have yet to declare their positions on Mr Kavanaugh.

Mr Trump’s comments about Ms Ford reflected a growing frustration among some in the White House, and by the president, that her story has not received the same level of scrutiny as Mr Kavanaugh’s, said a person close to the process.