President rallies supporters in wake of Kavanaugh hearing

At rally, Trump calls out Democrats for ‘meanness’

WHEELING, W.Va. — President Donald Trump on Saturday turned his embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh into a rallying cry for Republicans to vote in November, saying they can help reject the “ruthless and outrageous tactics” he says Democrats used against the judge.

“We see this horrible, horrible, radical group of Democrats. You see what’s happening right now,” Trump said at a rally with thousands of supporters in West Virginia. Trump won the state in 2016 by 42 percentage points and remains popular there.

“And they’re determined to take back power by any means necessary. You see the meanness, the nastiness. They don’t care who they hurt, who they have to run over to get power,” he said.

“We’re not going to give it to them,” Trump said.

Kavanaugh, the federal appeals judge Trump nominated to the nation’s highest court, appeared headed for confirmation until California professor Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers in Maryland in the 1980s. Kavanaugh denied her accusations and those of two other women since have accused him of sexual misconduct.

Ford initially made her claims in a confidential letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the letter was leaked after Kavanaugh’s initial confirmation hearing before the committee and Ford then told her explosive story to The Washington Post.

Feinstein denied being the source, but Trump blamed her for the leak and mocked her at the rally, telling supporters to remember her answer when she was asked about the leak.

“The entire nation has witnessed the shameless conduct of the Democrat Party,” Trump said.

Feinstein responded to Trump on Twitter, saying she acted “consistent” with Ford’s wishes for privacy from the moment she received the professor’s letter.

“We kept her letter confidential and did not leak the contents or its existence to anyone,” she said.

Trump took a humorous jab at another Judiciary Committee Democrat, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, the former Newark mayor considered a possible challenger in 2020.

During Kavanaugh’s initial confirmation hearing, Booker declared he was having a “Spartacus” moment in breaking committee rules and releasing documents about Kavanaugh, though the papers had already been cleared for release. He was referencing the 1960 movie starring Kirk Douglas about the leader of a slave revolt in antiquity.