Beyond the gasbaggery typical of his public appearances, the President made statements about the Supreme Court nominee and one of his accusers that will be difficult to walk back later.
At this stage, we are all aware what the phrase “Donald Trump press conference” connotes: an outpouring of semi-coherent utterances, many false, some cringe-worthy, and all subject to review by the President’s minders before they can be regarded as anything more consequential than human carbon-dioxide emissions. But even by Trump’s standards, his performance on Tuesday in New York was an alarming display of insensitivity, narcissism, and misogyny—not least for the handful of Republican moderate senators, such as Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, who may well decide the fate of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
In the past few days, Collins and Murkowski have both said that the allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, particularly those of Christine Blasey Ford, who is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning, deserve to be taken seriously and listened to with respect by all sides. Hours before Trump spoke, another Senate Republican, Jeff Flake, of Arizona, took to the floor and said pretty much the same thing.
Many liberal commentators expressed concern that these statements were mainly for show, and that their authors would ultimately vote for Kavanaugh, whatever happened at Thursday’s hearing. Whether that is true or not, Trump’s press conference has made it harder for anyone to maintain the fiction that Ford is being afforded a fair and impartial hearing. To the extent that this makes it harder for Republicans like Collins and Murkowski to keep up appearances and still vote for Kavanaugh, Trump’s remarks were deeply counterproductive.
Trump didn’t seem to care. Taking questions hours after he had chaired a United Nations Security Council meeting, he spoke in animated fashion for eighty minutes, and even at the end of all that time he seemed reluctant to wrap it up. But, despite his circumlocutions, his primary message was clear from the start. In response to a question about why the White House hadn’t agreed to an F.B.I. investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh, he said that the Democrats “know it’s a big, fat con job. And they go into a room, and I guarantee you, they laugh like hell on what they pulled off on you and on the public. They laugh like hell. So it wouldn’t have mattered if the F.B.I. came back with the cleanest score. . . . you wouldn’t have gotten one vote.”
The next question was admirably short and direct: “Mr. President, there are now three women accusing Judge Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Are you saying that all three of those women are liars?” In reply, Trump said, “I won’t get into that game.” But then he effectively did get into that game, saying of the accusations, “These are all false to me. . . . I can only say what they have done to this man is incredible.” Later in the press conference, he was asked the same question again. This time, he said he wanted to watch Thursday’s hearing, adding, “It’s possible that they”—a reference to Ford—“will be convincing.” He also said that if he believed Kavanaugh was guilty of the charges against him, he would withdraw his nomination. But then he again made clear his true feelings, saying, “Look, if we brought George Washington here and we said, We have George Washington, the Democrats would vote against him. Just so you understand.”
Harsh as it was, this line of attack was similar to the one taken by senior Republicans on Capitol Hill, such as Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. But Trump didn’t stop there. Instead, he went on to state baldly and repeatedly that, in cases of alleged sexual assault involving prominent men, he is inclined to sympathize with the accused rather than the accuser.
Twice he was asked whether the fact that he had been accused of sexual assault on numerous occasions had influenced his views of the Kavanaugh case. The first time, he went off on a detour, claiming, “I was accused by four or five women who got paid a lot of money to make up stories about me.” (He also said, “You can check with Sean Hannity.”) The second time around, he actually answered the question, and his response is worth quoting in full:
Well, it does impact my opinion, and you know why? Because I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me. I’m a very famous person, unfortunately. I’ve been a famous person for a long time. But I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me, really false charges. 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 where they say, Oh, Judge Kavanaugh this or that. It’s happened to me many times. I’ve had many false charges. I had a woman sitting in an airplane, and I attacked her while people were coming onto the plane and I have a No. 1 best-seller out. I mean, it was a total phony story. There are many of them. So when you say, Does it affect me in terms of my thinking with respect to Judge Kavanaugh?, absolutely, because I’ve had it many times.
There was much more to the press conference than this. Trump claimed that President Obama almost started a war with North Korea that would have killed millions of people. He referred to a Kurdish questioner as “Mr. Kurd.” He said that Jared Kushner was “going to be fair to the Palestinians.” And he accused China of meddling in the midterm elections.
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But this was all by the bye—the sort of routine Trump gasbaggery that members of his staff could walk back later, if they were so inclined. What they can’t walk back is the manner in which Trump talked about the accuser, a psychology professor and noted researcher, whom he wouldn’t mention by name, and the manner in which he talked about the accused, whom he named several times. “I look forward to watching her,” he said toward the end of the presser. “I do want to hear what she says. And maybe she’ll say—I could be convinced of anything. Maybe she’ll say something. But in the meantime I have to tell you, he’s one of the highest-quality human beings. He’s a tremendous man. He’s a tremendous genius. He’s a great intellect. He was, I believe, No. 1 at Yale.”
It’s far from clear whether Collins and Murkowski were listening to this. But we can rest assured that, all across the country, many, many other women were. And they won't forget it.
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