Christine Blasey Ford had just finished testifying. [...] President Trump called Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, and they agreed she was impressive. “We’re only at halftime,” Mr. McConnell said, trying to be reassuring.
Mr. Trump thought it was time to bring in the F.B.I. to investigate, as many opponents of Judge Kavanaugh had urged, but when he called the Hart Building, Donald F. McGahn II, his White House counsel, refused to take the call. Instead, Mr. McGahn cleared the room and sat down with Judge Kavanaugh and his wife, Ashley Kavanaugh. The only way to save his nomination, Mr. McGahn said, was to show the senators how he really felt, to channel his outrage and indignation at the charges he had denied.
Judge Kavanaugh did not need convincing. He was brimming with rage and resentment, so when he went before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he did not hold back. [...] In their war room, White House aides watching on television cheered and pumped their fists.
NYT
Trump is getting his MAGA wish to revert to an earlier time, at least in the White House. They are regressing. Perhaps this is why the comments coming out of the White House and off the Hill are so cocky. Since they thought that was a sterling performance and it gave them all erections, they think all the Republicans in the country feel the same. I wonder.
At one point, a dubious Mr. Trump asked Mr. McConnell if Senate Republicans were really committed to seeing it through. Mr. McConnell said absolutely yes.
“I’m stronger than mule piss” on this guy, he answered.
Thus providing his own very appropriate sobriquet, which I will be happy to use from now on: Mule Piss Mitch.
Mr. Trump was not especially enthusiastic about making Judge Kavanaugh his second Supreme Court nominee in the first place. The judge’s prior service as a White House aide to President George W. Bush made him suspect to Mr. Trump, who did not relish the idea of “a Bush guy” as his choice. Indeed, Mr. McConnell had warned against Judge Kavanaugh because of his paper trail, viewing other candidates as more easily confirmed.
Aides, led by Mr. McGahn, convinced Mr. Trump that Judge Kavanaugh would be the choice that would best suit the conservative movement, whose support has meant so much to the president.
[...]
That was why even after the formal interview, they arranged for Mr. Trump to have a second meeting with Judge Kavanaugh, this one including their wives for nearly two hours in the White House residence the night before the announcement in July.
The White House set up a larger operation than it did for Justice Gorsuch, opening a war room on the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with 11 lawyers and a couple of communications specialists aided by a team of lawyers at the Justice Department. They treated it as if it were a campaign, lining up more than 600 supportive statements and placing more than 200 op-ed pieces, not just in national newspapers but in those from key states like Maine, Arizona, Alaska and West Virginia. Outside groups on both sides aired millions of dollars worth of advertising.
Let me guess: they already knew something about Kavanaugh's temperament and background. Oh, what am I saying? Of course they already knew about his shady finances - SOMEbody paid off that large debt.
Mr. McGahn, who is stepping down after this nomination, devoted much of his time to the battle, talking with Mr. McConnell nearly every day and calling another half dozen senators most days. He and his team decided early on to hitch their wagon to Mr. McConnell, at times intentionally walling themselves off from the president and the White House.
They conducted more than a half-dozen mock hearings, including one that ran for more than 12 hours, to prepare Judge Kavanaugh for the real thing.
And then the charges from Dr. Ford and Ms. Ramirez hit.
Mr. Trump talked with Mr. McGahn and they agreed that Judge Kavanaugh had to personally confront the charges immediately before support eroded among Republicans. They did what had never been done in a Supreme Court confirmation and put him on television to be interviewed, choosing Mr. Trump’s favorite network, Fox News.
Judge Kavanaugh, joined by his wife, seemed flat and mechanical as he retreated to the same talking points denying the allegations. Mr. Trump, who styles himself a master of television, thought his nominee came across as weak.
And then Julie Swetnick appeared.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a key swing Republican, was so troubled that she took a copy of Ms. Swetnick’s statement, highlighted and marked up, to a meeting of Republican committee chairmen. Senator John Cornyn of Texas went through it point by point with her to debunk it. [...] No one came forward to corroborate the allegation, and news reports surfaced about past lawsuits in which Ms. Swetnick’s truthfulness was questioned.
“This was a turning point,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “That allegation was so over the top, it created a moment that was scary, quite frankly. But that moment was quickly replaced by disgust.”
[...]
Mr. Durbin agreed that he “looked at it with a degree of skepticism,” but he said that the notion that Mr. Avenatti tipped the scale was “wishful thinking” by Republicans who were bent on confirming Judge Kavanaugh at all costs.
[...]
The moment of maximum danger, that hour after Dr. Blasey’s testimony on Sept. 27, sent a panic through Republican circles. Some in the White House and on Capitol Hill began privately speculating about when Judge Kavanaugh might withdraw. Dr. Blasey appeared so human, so guileless, so believable that even Mr. Trump called her “very credible.”
But Judge Kavanaugh’s angry outburst rallied Republicans. He went so far in expressing rage that he blamed the allegations on a plot to take “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and he sharply challenged two of the Democratic senators about their own drinking. During a break, Mr. McGahn told him he had to dial it back and strike a calmer tone. When he returned to the committee room, Judge Kavanaugh moderated his anger and apologized to one of the senators.
[...]
Republican senators met that night just off the Capitol Rotunda. Ms. Collins said she would find it hard to vote yes without a sworn statement from Judge Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge denying that he saw what Dr. Blasey described. Aides to Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Judiciary chairman, got a fresh statement from Mr. Judge within three hours to satisfy her.
They've
played her before. They knew they could do it again.
That night Mr. Graham went to dinner at Cafe Berlin with Ms. Collins, Mr. Flake and Ms. Murkowski. They discussed whether a limited F.B.I. investigation might assuage them.
The list of four witnesses they selected, however, later struck Democrats as so constrained that they demanded a more expansive investigation. In the end, the F.B.I. interviewed 10 people, but not many others Democrats recommended.
[...]
Ms. Murkowski was struggling with what to do. She asked the committee staff to question Judge Kavanaugh’s friends about their understanding of terms from his yearbook like “boofing” and “Devil’s Triangle” to see if they matched his.
And since we don't get to see the FBI report, we don't know if they did. We DO know that some tried to get in touch with the FBI, and failing, went to reporters saying that indeed Kavanaugh was lying about those things.
Among those she heard from was Mr. Bush, who while no fan of Mr. Trump’s intervened nonetheless on behalf of his former aide, Judge Kavanaugh. The former president also called Ms. Collins three times as well as Mr. Flake and other Republicans.
If Mr. Flake was moved by the protesters, though, other Republicans were not. Some like Mr. McConnell and Mr. Graham got their backs up. “The tactics that were used completely backfired,” said Mr. McConnell. “Harassing members at their homes, crowding the halls with people acting horribly, the effort to humiliate us really helped me unify my conference. So I want to thank these clowns for all the help they provided.”
Less helpful may have been Mr. Trump’s decision to mock Dr. Blasey during a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, mimicking her telling senators she did not recall certain details about the alleged assault. Aides and senators had been urging him not to attack her directly for fear of alienating the very undecided senators he needed, and, indeed, Mr. Flake, Ms. Murkowski and Ms. Collins all condemned his remarks. But White House aides insisted that the president’s outburst fortified Republicans.
I don't doubt it a bit. They're a cruel lot, and they get high off each other's cruelty.
Ms. Collins spent nearly five hours reading all of the interview summaries and reams of raw material from the F.B.I.’s tip line. Ms. Murkowski returned to the secure room as late as 10:30 at night to go through it again, after meeting earlier in the day with sexual assault survivors.
[...]
Mr. McConnell and Mr. Cornyn were having lunch in the Senate Dining Room during a break when Ms. Collins came in. They invited her to join them and she disclosed that she too would vote yes on final confirmation. She later delivered a 45-minute floor speech explaining that the allegations simply were not corroborated.
And neither were they contradicted, but she must not have had a problem with that.
Mr. Grassley, the committee chairman, was in tears and retreated to a cloakroom to collect himself.
Snowflake.
The final vote came on an overcast Saturday afternoon. The suspense was gone, but the emotion was not. Right after the final tally was read by Vice President Mike Pence, presiding in his role as president of the Senate, a woman yelled from the gallery: “This is a stain on American history. Do you understand that?”
One level down, off the floor of the Senate, Mr. McGahn and White House aides assembled in the vice president’s office. Aides to Mr. Grassley and Mr. McConnell gathered in the leader’s suite for a celebratory toast.
When Mr. Pence walked down the long marble steps toward his motorcade, hundreds of protesters, framed by the Supreme Court in the background, chanted, “Vote them out!”
Did Mule Piss Mitch thank those clowns?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
