Trump finally got his candidate
WASHINGTON — Yesterday Brett Kavanaugh finally became President Trump’s type of Supreme Court nominee.
Trump was reportedly unhappy with Kavanaugh’s attempt to get out ahead of yesterday’s hearing by portraying himself in a Fox News interview as an innocent choirboy who never had any sexual contact in high school, let alone a person who could be capable of the kind of violent attack Christine Blasey Ford has alleged. Trump, who wanted more fight out of Kavanaugh, even openly pondered changing his mind about his second Supreme Court nominee during a press conference Wednesday.
But Kavanaugh took an entirely different tack before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Though it was Ford who was called to give testimony about her claim of being a victim, it was Kavanaugh who angrily presented himself as the aggrieved party — much as Trump has done in the face of the multiple sexual misconduct allegations made against him.
A seething Kavanaugh virtually shouted his opening statement and even invoked Trump’s name as he assumed an openly partisan tone. With a furled brow and curled lip, he charged Democrats with conducting “a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election.”
“You may defeat me in the final vote, but you’ll never get me to quit,” Kavanaugh said. “Never.”
His fury turned to open hostility toward committee Democrats, a clear departure from his testimony weeks ago that judges should stay out of politics.
He frequently talked over Democratic questioners — and even challenged them, as when he countered Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s question about whether he’d ever blacked out after drinking by asking her: “Have you?” He later apologized for that retort.
Still Kavanaugh was not only a stark contrast to the composed, if admittedly terrified, Ford who testified that she was confident that a drunken Kavanaugh tried to force himself on her in 1982 and even called on her psychology expertise to explain how such memories become seared in the brain.
But Kavanaugh’s modified manner opened the door for the allmale GOP members of the panel, who remained silent during Ford’s testimony and left prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to do their questioning, to speak up in his defense.
“You’re looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend,” said a furious Sen. Lindsey Graham (RS.C.), a close Trump ally.
Yesterday morning after Ford’s harrowing account, Republicans were worried about Kavanaugh’s prospects. By last night, they were energized. And Trump finally got the fight, and the nominee, he wanted.