In a raucous campaign-style rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Donald Trump mocked Christine Blasey Ford, who in wrenching testimony at a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee last week said the supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager.

As hundreds of supporters cheered, Trump delivered a crude imitation of Ford from her testimony, in which she vividly described a violent sexual assault she alleges Kavanaugh committed against her in the early 1980s, while admitting that certain details of the time and place were lost to memory.

Early on Wednesday, the Republican senator Jeff Flake, a key member of the Senate judiciary committee that held the hearing, called Trump’s remarks “kind of appalling”.

Sign up for the US morning briefing

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 20 women, whose allegations he has denied and dismissed. But last week he called Ford a “very credible witness” and said: “I thought her testimony was very compelling and she looks like a very fine woman to me, very fine woman.”

At his rally, the president mocked Ford’s testimony with a question-and-answer patter that brought cheers from the crowd in Southaven, Mississippi.

“How did you get home?” Trump said, echoing a question Ford was asked by the committee. “I don’t remember,” the president said.

“How did you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know.’ What neighborhood was it? ‘I don’t know.’ Where’s the house? ‘I don’t know.’”

Trump defends Kavanaugh but says 'a lot will depend' on FBI investigation Read more

Trump concluded the riff by lamenting the personal cost to Kavanaugh of Ford’s allegations and by insinuating that Ford was part of a partisan conspiracy. “They destroy people, these are really evil people,” Trump said.

But Flake countered on Wednesday morning.

“To discuss something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right. It’s just not right, and I wish he had not done it,” Flake said on NBC. He was standing next to the Democratic senator and fellow committee member Chris Coons of Delaware.

Flake triggered an FBI investigation of Kavanaugh last Friday when, at the last minute and after being confronted by two protesters in an elevator on Capitol Hill, he agreed to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination – but only if there was a week delay for law enforcement to investigate allegations of serious sexual misconduct against the judge. The White House then ordered the investigation.

Flake made his about-face having signaled moments earlier that he would vote to approve Kavanaugh outright, then huddling in frantic negotiations with Democratics on the committee. He has since continued his strong stance of questioning Kavanaugh’s nomination.

On Tuesday night after the remarks, Michael Bromwich, a member of Ford’s legal team, condemned “a vicious, vile and soulless attack”.

Writing on Twitter, he said of Ford, and Trump: “Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well? She is a remarkable profile in courage. He is a profile in cowardice.”

Michael R. Bromwich (@mrbromwich) A vicious, vile and soulless attack on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well? She is a remarkable profile in courage. He is a profile in cowardice. https://t.co/UJ0bGxV1EZ

Last week’s day of drama had followed an extraordinary hearing by the committee the day before when Kavanaugh and Ford gave dueling testimony about a party in their high school years at which Ford says the then 17-year-old Kavanaugh attempted to rape her, when she was 15. He furiously disputed the account in an emotional and partisan display.

In contrast to Trump’s portrayal on Tuesday evening, Ford accurately placed multiple people in Kavanaugh’s contemporaneous social circle – as established by his archived calendars from the era – at the scene, and gave a clear account of the alleged attack itself.

In her testimony, she said: “I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school.”

Kavanaugh is Trump’s second pick to fill a supreme court vacancy. The confirmation process for Trump’s first pick, Neil Gorsuch, proceeded to a vote without significant controversy.

Hundreds of law professors sign letters rejecting Kavanaugh nomination Read more

But Kavanaugh has been waylaid by accusations of sexual assault by Ford and two other women who have spoken out publicly, and by doubts about his testimony before the Senate, which included conspiracy-mongering and dubious descriptions of his high school and college years.

Speaking under oath before the Senate committee, Kavanaugh denied any drinking problem and denied bragging about sexual conquests in a high school yearbook entry.

Former classmates have since stepped forward to say that Kavanaugh was a frequent drunk. The New York Times on Tuesday published a handwritten letter by Kavanaugh instructing friends participating in an upcoming holiday rental to “warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us”.

In testimony last Thursday, Ford described attending a house party in the Washington DC suburbs in the early 1980s at which she was pushed into a bedroom where a drunk Kavanaugh held her down, groped her, tried to strip her and left her fearing for her life.

Republicans have insinuated that Ford mistook Kavanaugh’s identity.

Ford told the Senate she was “100%” certain that he was her attacker, Kavanaugh said he was “100%” certain he was not.