Trump urges supporters to vote in wake of Kavanaugh hearing

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump on Saturday turned his embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh into a rallying cry for Republicans to vote in November, saying they can help reject the “ruthless and outrageous tactics” he says Democrats used against the judge.

“We see this horrible, horrible, radical group of Democrats. You see what’s happening right now,” Trump said at a rally with thousands of supporters in West Virginia. Trump won the state in 2016 by 42 percentage points and remains popular there.

Kavanaugh, the federal appeals judge Trump nominated to the nation’s highest court, appeared headed for confirmation until California professor Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers in Maryland in the 1980s. Kavanaugh denied her accusations and those of two other women since have accused him of sexual misconduct.

Ford initially made her claims in a confidential letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the letter was leaked after Kavanaugh’s initial confirmation hearing before the committee and Ford then told her explosive story to The Washington Post.

Feinstein denied being the source, but Trump blamed her for the leak and mocked her at the rally, telling supporters to remember her answer when she was asked about the leak.

Trump issued a fresh defense of Kavanaugh at the Wheeling rally, calling him “one of the most accomplished legal minds of our time” and saying he had suffered “the meanness, the anger” of Democrats.

The president urged his supporters to go to the polls on Nov. 6, when control of Congress is at stake, and vote Republican and “reject the ruthless and outrageous tactics of the Democrat Party.”

Trump appeared in Wheeling a day after he reversed course and ordered a new FBI investigation of Kavanaugh. Democrats and some Republicans had been asking for the new investigation, which will delay by at least a week a Senate vote on his confirmation.

Trump sounded familiar themes during the hour-plus rally, including talking about the economy’s performance, his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, the escalating trade war with China and his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jon Un.

Besides the Democrats, Trump leveled some of his harshest criticism at the news media, criticizing its coverage of his June summit with Kim and pointing out reporters in the WesBanco Arena.

The audience broke into chants of “CNN sucks” when he again referred to journalists as the “enemy of the people.”

Trump’s visit to West Virginia was intended to help rally support for GOP candidates in the November elections, including Senate nominee Patrick Morrisey.