Sniveling little bitch...

Trump thrilled by Kavanaugh's angry defiance

The president applauds a Trumpian defense from his nominee — but some White House allies are concerned by his accuser's 'credible' performance.

By ANNIE KARNI

President Donald Trump and his aides were ebullient Thursday as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh defiantly rejected charges of sexual misconduct — a mood that reflected some relief after Trump officials conceded that his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, offered a compelling performance in the first half of the day.

Trump and senior officials were impressed by Kavanaugh’s combative defense before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which the Trump nominee, alternating between fury and tears, called several misconduct charges against him a “calculated and orchestrated political hit” and “national disgrace” that had devastated his life and family.

One senior White House official said that Kavanaugh had settled on a formula that had saved Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ nomination from sexual harassment charges in 1991, and also suits Trump’s personal style: hit back hard and without apology.

“What do you like to drink, Senator?” Kavanaugh angrily asked one questioner, Sen. Sheldon White House (D-R.I.).

“I think he’s studied the way people around Donald Trump have been treated and he figured out a way to prevail,” said one senior White House official. The official confirmed that Trump had watched and relished Kavanaugh’s combative opening statement, which the official called “superb.”

It remained unclear by evening whether Kavanaugh’s nomination would survive an astonishing day that covered everything from alleged rape to drinking games, the geography of Bethesda, Md., and crass high school yearbook jokes. But the late afternoon mood in the White House was considerably brighter than it had been earlier in the day, when some White House officials cringed over the decision by Senate Republicans to hire a female prosecutor to question Ford in the nationally-televised hearing.

“That’s a disaster,” said one administration official. The official argued that Republican lawmakers had made a mistake by caving to the pressures of identity politics and hiring a woman to quiz Ford so as to avoid having an all-white male lineup of GOP Senators do the questioning.

Trump allies also recognized the bad optics of a prosecutor seeming to interrogate a victim who even some committee Republicans later acknowledged had come across as sympathetic.

"She seems sincere, kind, thoughtful and credible," a former Trump White House official said. "Hard to suggest she is politically motivated."

Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor chosen to question Ford on behalf of all of the Republican members of the Committee, approached Ford with a patient tone and spent the first half of the hearing asking detailed questions about Ford’s fear of flying and who paid for and advised her to take a polygraph test.

Trump allies who want to see Kavanaugh confirmed were also concerned that Mitchell failed to poke any substantial holes in Ford's account or character that would make her story less believable. During her questioning, Mitchell herself acknowledged that the day's format — in which she was able to question Ford in five-minute intervals — was not an ideal way to assess an alleged victim's story.

But not all White House aides and officials were so unhappy about Ford’s testimony in the first half of the day. One White House official and another person close to the confirmation process said that, despite emotional responses on TV and via social media to the day's hearing, the key audience is a limited number of Republican Senators. They include Sens. Jeff Flake, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Those senators have expressed a desire for a no-drama, fair hearing, and the sources said they felt Mitchell was delivering that.

The two sources also noted that the hearing had failed to produce any new facts that might incriminate Kavanaugh. And midway through the 53 year old judge’s testimony, he had made no obvious stumbles or admissions of wrongdoing.

Trump aides were “particularly impressed,” said one of the White House officials, when Kavanaugh told senators that his ten-year-old daughter had recently said a bedtime prayer for Ford.

And after Sen. Lindsey Graham launched a dramatic tirade against committee Democrats who he said “want… to destroy this guy’s life,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cheered him on via Twitter.

At least one conservative legal activist, meanwhile, distributed talking points defending Mitchell's line of questioning, noting that she had been able to show that “whoever drove [Ford] home doesn't exist" and pointing out that the polygraph test could be invalid because she took around the time of her grandmother’s funeral. The talking points also noted that Mitchell had managed to prove that "there was no witness to support what she's alleging happened."

During the first half of the day, Mitchell also appeared to avoid giving Ford more opportunities to describe the details of the assault she says was perpetrated in an upstairs bedroom of a house by Brett Kavanaugh when the two were teenagers.

White House officials said Trump, who watched the hearing aboard Air Force One on his flight back to Washington from New York City, was not angry so much as shocked by the spectacle of the hearing.

“He feels for Brett, the person,” said one person familiar with his thinking, noting that Trump sees it as Kavanaugh’s job to defend his own name. “When he’s accused, he punches back,” the person said. “He sees this as someone else’s accuser.”

More generally, Republicans said they feel a sense of resignation that Kavanaugh had mishandled the situation from the beginning, by trying to portray himself as a choir boy instead of admitting that he drank heavily in high school, college and law school as multiple classmates and yearbook entries have shown. A better strategy, White House officials conceded, would have been to admit he didn’t remember the assault described by Ford, but that he believed her story and issue her an apology.

White House officials said they saw his decision to sit for an interview with Fox News on Monday as a mistake. And that a better way to have handled the accusations the way Trump did after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape in October of 2016, with a quick apology and then a forceful forging ahead.