Trump Launches the Attack on Christine Blasey Ford We Were All Expecting
Ever since Dr. Christine Blasey Ford went public with her allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, we’ve waited with baited breath to see just how bad President Trump’s response would be. This morning he finally broke free from whatever White House closet aides had his phone locked in and tweeted—in an exceedingly poorly-worded message—that his Supreme Court nominee is the one “under assault.” And that wasn’t all.
The strong implication in that second tweet is that if Ford is telling the truth, there should certainly be some documentation with the local police, meaning that Trump and his ilk can conclude she’s lying in the absence of such evidence.
The timing of these tweets was somewhat ironic, given the fact that a number of reports were just published about how “restrained” Trump’s response had been so far—a depressingly low bar indeed.
Politico reported this morning that Trump questioned during an interview on his friend Sean Hannity’s Fox News show why “somebody” didn’t contact the FBI about the allegations years ago.
“You could say, ‘Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?’” Trump told Hannity in the live interview before a rally last night in Las Vegas. “You can also say, ‘When did this all happen? What is going on?’”
Over at CNN, the network noted Trump’s “more tactful approach” in recent days, reporting that his White House aides have been “quietly stunned by Trump’s respectful handling” of the matter. After Trump’s tweets this morning, the same CNN reporter who wrote that story yesterday tweeted that he’d finally posted the message “White House aides have feared all week.”
It didn’t stop there: Axios’ tick tock extraordinaire Jonathan Swan also ran a ‘Trump straining at his restraints’ piece just this morning before the president’s tweets.
A source who’s been talking with Trump throughout the Kavanaugh allegations coming to light told Swan “you have no idea” how hard it’s been just to keep the president of the United States from openly attacking a victim of sexual assault in public.
“Hopefully he can keep it together until Monday. That’s only, like, another 48 hours right?” a White House official also told Axios.
They clearly spoke too soon.