Trump doubts Kavanaugh’s accuser
WASHINGTON — In a Friday morning tweet storm after days of restraint, President Donald Trump intensified the controversy over his embattled Supreme Court nominee, Brett M. Kavanaugh, by expressing doubt about the woman accusing him of attempting to rape her when they were in high school.
Trump portrayed the allegations by Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist at Palo Alto University, as part of a partisan effort by Democrats to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation. He repeated his declarations made throughout this week, including at a political rally in Las Vegas Thursday night, that his nominee is a good person of eminent standing.
“Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a fine man, with an impeccable reputation, who is under assault by radical left wing politicians who don’t want to know the answers, they just want to destroy and delay,” Trump said in the first of three tweets. “Facts don’t matter. I go through this with them every single day in D.C.”
In a second tweet, Trump questioned why Ford, who has said she was 15 at the time, didn’t file charges after the alleged incident in 1982. He echoed some allies in conservative legal circles who in recent days have attempted to sow doubts about her story.
“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents,” Trump tweeted. “I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”
His third tweet underlined that point: “The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW. Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?”
Just days after stating that Ford’s story should be heard, Trump reverted to the more recalcitrant, partisan stance for which he’s better known, blaming the controversy on his usual foils, the media and Democrats. But the political risk of his new tack was soon evident: Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of two undecided Republican moderates whose votes could decide Kavanaugh’s fate, condemned Trump’s tweets.
“I was appalled by the president’s tweet,” she said at an event in Maine, according to the Portland Press Herald.
“First of all, we know that allegations of sexual assault — I’m not saying that’s what happened in this case — but we know allegations of sexual assault are one of the most unreported crimes that exist. So I thought that the president’s tweet was completely inappropriate and wrong.”
Even as the #MeToo movement has elevated understanding of the frequency of sexual assault and harassment, and encouraged reporting, officials who help victims expressed concerns that Trump’s tweets would perpetuate stigmas that have long kept women from speaking up about such behavior.
The majority of women who experience assaults or harassment do not report the incidents and may wait years to tell even confidants about their experiences, said Laura Palumbo, communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, a nonprofit public health and social services organization.
“Whenever a victim-blaming message is put out there, it really affirms the rape myths that silence survivors of sexual assault. And it adds to misinformation and misunderstanding about the issues of sexual assault harassment and abuse,” Palumbo said.
Soon after Trump’s tweets, the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport was trending on Twitter as women posted their reasons for keeping silent after sexual assaults.
By going on the attack, the president was certain to unnerve other Republicans given the huge political stakes in this fight less than two months ahead of November’s midterm elections. Yet that shift tracks with his own longstanding denials of sexual abuse allegations against him from multiple women; he has called them liars, provoking one to pursue a defamation suit against him.