The President Just Turned Around and Called Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's Story a Democratic 'Hoax'

From Esquire

Ah, yes. It was always coming. Remember when aides to Donald Trump, American president, were "stunned" at how calmly he was handling the proceedings when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford accused his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, of sexual assault? Even right after Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Trump conceded in measured tones that she'd been a "credible" witness. Of course, all that dignity and respect was never going to last. By Wednesday of last week, Trump had turned the issue into another opportunity to disgrace the office he holds, mocking Ford at a rally and encouraging the crowd to laugh at her-just as she testified Kavanaugh and his friend did all those years ago.

Now Kavanaugh has been confirmed after the Senate Republican caucus essentially adopted the Ed Whelan Line-named for the conservative activist who initially promoted it, and was ridiculed for doing so, on Twitter-that they believed Ford was assaulted, but not that Kavanaugh did it. (In this, they're suggesting they believe Ford's testimony, except for the part where she expressed "100 percent" confidence that it was Kavanaugh. It seems more likely they simply do not care.) The campaign to rewrite the history of what happened during his confirmation process has begun, and the president has characteristically joined in with all the finesse of a rhinoceros on speed:

(Here's another opportunity to point out the president almost certainly does these Chopper Talks because the din of the rotors behind him makes it harder for reporters to challenge his claims with follow-up questions. He can more easily talk over them and railroad the discussion, as he did here.)

There's a whole lot going on here, and none of it's good. Republicans have mostly avoided calling Dr. Ford a liar outright, merely focusing on the idea there was "no corroboration," as the president does here. In fact, there was corroboration: Ford produced her therapist's notes and affidavits from friends and relatives indicating she'd told a consistent story for years-since well before Kavanaugh was under consideration for the nation's highest court. You don't need an eyewitness to have corroboration. The question is whether you believe her corroborative evidence, not whether there is any. It's also whether you believe Kavanaugh, who a growing body of evidence suggests lied under oath to Congress on multiple occasions.

But more to the point, there's the claim-also building all over the right-that actually, Ford's claims (along with those of Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick) were part of a Democratic Party conspiracy. Where once Trump suggested Ford was a credible witness, he's now saying her story is a "hoax." (He can do this because he does not believe anything is true in any fixed sense, and no one can hold him accountable for obvious hypocrisy and lies because of mammoth structural barriers.) Obviously, if something is a hoax cooked up by a political party, the underlying claims aren't true. So he and the others are most certainly calling Ford a liar. To remove all doubt, Trump went all in: "It was all made up, it was fabricated, and it’s a disgrace."

This kind of rhetoric is extremely dangerous for Ford, not that the president will care:

It might seem excessive for Republicans to double down on their attacks after Kavanaugh was already confirmed. It is. But it's also a larger tactic designed to galvanize their voting base to turn out in November. That's why Trump also suggested the proceedings were an "insult to the American public," tying that directly to the coming election. It's a combination of Trump's belief that his supporters are The Real American People and his need to light a fire under that base of support, stirring up the outrage and resentment so they'll come out to vote even though they just won the Kavanaugh battle.

This matches up well with the undercurrent of a lot of Republican rhetoric in the aftermath: that those opposing Kavanaugh were somehow attempting to circumvent the will of the American people for their own partisan gain. (This, of course, was totally different from when Republicans refused to even give Merrick Garland a hearing, which was justified because fuck you, that's why.) It might have been to Democrats' gain, but putting Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court was by no measure The Will of the People. His approval rating was underwater, and the second-lowest of any nominee since they started asking in the '80s. (That was true even before Dr. Ford came forward.) Moreover, he was nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by more than 2 percent, and confirmed by senators who represent just 44 percent of the American people. Those voting against represented 56 percent of Americans. Opposition to Kavanaugh's elevation is not far-left extremism, it is the majority view.

None of that is the point, though. We know now that the only governing principle in Trump era Republican politics is that the truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe. (This didn't begin with Trump, of course: just check out Mitch McConnell's performance on Face the Nation yesterday, the latest in his long-running series of deceptions about his stonewalling of Garland's nomination.) If you want Kavanaugh to be the The People's Choice, just keep saying he is until reporters and interviewers stop questioning the claim. (It doesn't take long-ask Donald Trump.) That's also where the rhetoric suggesting that All Men are now at risk comes from. When Trump says "your sons and husbands" could be in Kavanaugh's place, it's an attempt to personalize the larger culture-war battle over gender power dynamics that has arisen in the #MeToo era.

Anyway, these various midterm-oriented tactics may well actually succeed. As Greg Sargent pointed out in The Washington Posttoday, it looks like making Kavanaugh's nomination a purely partisan question-and thus tying him to Trump directly-didn't just boost the nominee's support. It also boosted Republicans running for Senate seats in tight races, particularly in red states with a sitting Democratic senator trying to hold on. While the fight will likely boost turnout among women, who will go for Democrats by growing margins and may well power them to victory in the House, it seems to be shoring up Republicans' chances of keeping or even expanding their hold on the Senate. If they hold onto that, they can continue to shape the judiciary branch in the image of Brett Kavanaugh-or at least Neil Gorsuch. In this respect, the dark calculus of Mitch McConnell (and to some extent, it must be said, the president) seems to be paying off yet again.

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