President Donald Trump asserted that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, or her family would have reported her alleged sexual assault to law enforcement at the time it happened if it was “was as bad as she says.” | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images White House 'The president had to step in': White House shifts strategy on Kavanaugh defense Trump set off a renewed firestorm with his direct challenge to the woman who accused his Supreme Court nominee of a high school sexual assault.

President Donald Trump for the first time directly challenged the woman who made a sexual assault allegation against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, part of a strategic shift designed to reframe the scandal as a partisan attack on his administration.

The president, still in Las Vegas for a fundraiser before heading to Missouri for a rally, asserted on Twitter that Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, or her family would have reported the episode to law enforcement at the time it happened — when she was still in high school — if it “was as bad as she says.” He also openly tied her claims to Senate Democrats, who he accused of trying to “Obstruct & Resist & Delay.”


One Republican close to the confirmation process said Trump, who has briefly commented on Ford’s allegations but had avoided directly questioning her credibility, led the decision to engage directly, in part in an effort to turn the crisis into a lever for motivating his conservative base with less than two months before November’s midterm elections.

The allegations against Kavanaugh have turned an otherwise uneventful confirmation process into the ultimate wedge issue for Trump, giving the president and his allies an opportunity to amplify conservative perceptions of liberal political correctness run amok by framing the issue as a smear on Trump’s pick for the nation’s highest court — a man who is expected to cement a conservative majority, achieving a longstanding goal of many Republicans.

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“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. Facts don’t matter. I go through this with them every single day in D.C.,” Trump tweeted on Friday.

Trump’s comments represented a shift in tone to put the administration back on offense, according to the Republican close to the confirmation process. “This is getting ridiculous,” this person said. “The president had to step in.”

The strategy carries huge risks. Some Republicans fear the president and other critics of Kavanaugh's accuser could ostracize and enrage women of both parties heading into the midterms. On Friday afternoon, Maine Sen. Susan Collins — a Republican whose vote will be crucial for Kavanaugh’s chances of confirmation — said she was “appalled” by Trump’s tweet, according to The Associated Press.

Trump’s tweet also spawned a Twitter hashtag, #WhyIDidntReport, with women sharing their stories of sexual assault.

Shortly before Trump tweeted, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway went on television to issue a similar message. “Let’s not conflate the larger MeToo movement with whatever did or did not happen in the summer of 1982, 36 years ago, that was not spoken about for the first time ever until 30 years later, that Judge Brett Kavanaugh has completely denied,” Conway said in an interview on CNN.

In interviews, more than a half-dozen Republican operatives and others with ties to the White House, said they believe the Kavanaugh drama will help energize conservative voters, many of whom are furious over what they view as a politically motivated attack on the nominee.

“This finally gets the coalition that beat Hillary Clinton into the ground awakened,” said Shawn Steel, the Republican National committeeman in Orange County, California, a key battleground for control of the House. “It’s a godsend for Republicans and really hurts the Democrats. Just from a purely cynical political perspective, it’s a godsend.”

Steel added that the escalating fight over the nomination “has stimulated our lazy, armchair conservatives.” He said the allegations against Kavanaugh “got people that barely pay attention really riled up. It’s got our side on fire.”

Conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace said the allegations have even rallied social conservatives who had been pushing Trump to pick a more hard-line nominee like appeals court Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

“His hearings and his testimony generated no buzz” in conservative circles, Deace said. “Now, the base is even more united behind this guy because they view it as a character assassination.”

Two Republicans close to the White House said that while many in the GOP view stocking the federal judiciary with conservative judges as one of their top priorities, the matter hasn’t so far animated the president’s base as much as the wedge issues that Trump has repeatedly hammered on Twitter and at his rallies, from NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to his attacks on tech companies allegedly suppressing conservative voices on social media. But they said they’ve seen early indications that the sexual assault allegations have changed that, inspiring conservatives to engage.

Trump’s tweets followed a misstep by White House ally Ed Whelan, a conservative activist and legal commentator, who laid out a theory on Thursday night that Ford — who says Kavanaugh forcefully groped her, pinning her to a bed at a suburban Maryland house party — had mistaken Kavanaugh for another Georgetown Prep classmate, which Ford denied through her lawyer. Ford and Kavanaugh were in high school when the incident allegedly occurred. Whelan apologized on Friday for naming the classmate.

Ford’s lawyer continues to negotiate the terms of her potential appearance at a public hearing, holding a drawn-out back and forth over an event that risks replaying the Anita Hill hearings during Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation in 1991, which catapulted discussions about workplace harassment to the forefront of the 1992 presidential election.

In the hours after Ford’s allegation was published in The Washington Post last weekend, Republicans close to the White House came to the conclusion that Trump needed to stand by Kavanaugh, with one arguing to POLITICO that the president abandoning his choice “would depress GOP voters instead of motivating them.”

Until Friday, the president mostly followed a carefully planned strategy the White House devised to respond to Kavanaugh’s accuser mostly by reiterating support for his Supreme Court nominee and casting the blame on Democrats, specifically Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for sitting on Ford’s letter until after confirmation hearings were complete.

But there were signs that Trump’s patience was waning. In an interview with The Hill this week, he attacked Democrats for not coming forward sooner with the allegation. “This is no different than the Russian witch hunt, what they’ve done is they make up a lot of stuff and try and obstruct and resist,” he said.

Ford’s accusations have energized liberals who believe Trump and his allies have consistently dismissed women’s allegations against powerful men, meaning the issue could have the simultaneous effect of driving Democrats to the polls.

Despite Republicans’ message discipline, some in the GOP have begun attacking Ford personally, which could further alienate women voters of both parties. “She’s a tool. She barely knows what’s going on. She is just the latest incarnation of Anita Hill,” Steel told POLITICO. “She’s the one that’s trying to castrate Kavanaugh.”

Yet other Republicans close to the Trump campaign believe that the entire episode will blend into the barrage of daily controversies that have assaulted voters over the past 20 months, only to fall off their radar as they move on the next scandal of the moment.

“I suspect that it will be a forgotten issue by the time November rolls around. Everyone makes proclamations that, ‘This is going to do X in the midterm elections.’ But there are very few things that stay in the zeitgeist that long,” said Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign data scientist who is now running an outside group that is working to register rural and working-class voters.

Trump’s nomination of Kavanagh this summer was viewed as a virtual lock, particularly after Democrats in the confirmation hearings failed to dredge up damaging information that would stick to the judge. But for Republicans, the relatively boring process never required them to pay too close attention.

That changed when Ford came forward with her allegations, which many conservatives have come to view not just as an untrue and unfair assault on a decent judge, but as a purely partisan effort to stall the nomination and drag out the process.

Republicans have struggled in special elections over the past two years to match the Democratic Party’s intensity — with GOP leaders relying heavily on Trump and his allies to make their case to voters.

While Trump’s ability to appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court was a top issue for voters in the 2016 election, Kavanaugh is deeply unpopular. He has suffered from low poll numbers, with just 31 percent of American adults saying in a poll this month that they supported Trump’s decision to nominate him.



CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to show in the ninth paragraph that Kellyanne Conway spoke just before President Donald Trump tweeted.