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Constrained From Fighting, Trump Is Left a Spectator With Kavanaugh in Peril

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. — As the fate of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, teetered over a sexual assault allegation from decades ago, President Donald Trump vented his frustration about his own party’s unwillingness to aggressively hit back.

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Julie Hirschfeld Davis
, New York Times

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. — As the fate of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, teetered over a sexual assault allegation from decades ago, President Donald Trump vented his frustration about his own party’s unwillingness to aggressively hit back.

Speaking to thousands of supporters at a rally in Missouri on Friday, Trump recounted how he had implored an unnamed senator to “fight for” Kavanaugh, and “not worry about the other side.” The lawmaker pushed back, the president said, citing his experience from 25 years in politics. But Trump said he had told the man that he knew better: “I’ve been in politics for 2 1/2 years, and I’m the president of the United States.”

The exchange highlighted the clash between Trump’s pugnacious instincts and the political realities surrounding Kavanaugh’s imperiled nomination. Trump is confronting a situation that is beyond his control, with the Senate Judiciary Committee making the decisions, including a momentous one Sunday in which it reached an agreement to hear public testimony from the judge’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

With one notable exception late last week, Trump has heeded instructions from his advisers and Republican senators to hold his fire, lest he provoke a calamitous backlash. Constrained by his party’s perilous electoral prospects and the accusations of sexual misconduct he has faced in the past, the president is virtually powerless to influence the outcome of perhaps his administration’s top priority.

The public spectacle that will surround Blasey’s testimony Thursday illustrates the degree to which a confirmation effort that was once seen as an island of functionality in a tumultuous White Househas become the latest messy episode in a presidency full of them. The development could carry profound consequences not only for the future of the Supreme Court, but also for Republicans facing the growing possibility of losing control of Congress in November, partly at the hands of female voters.

As the risk that Kavanaugh’s nomination could collapse has mounted — a new allegation of sexual misconduct published by The New Yorker on Sunday night raised fresh questions about whether he could survive — Trump has been forced into the role of spectator.

The president was briefed on the allegation Sunday, according to people in contact with him, and was remaining firmly behind Kavanaugh, who is also scheduled to testify before the committee and who has vehemently denied the allegations. But one of the people said the president argued that the new charge showed why the White House should have fought back against Blasey from the beginning.

The agreement to hear Blasey’s testimony was sealed after days of frenzied, bitter negotiations that left Trump and his team believing that his own party had allowed itself to be exploited. For Trump, the hearing is dangerously unpredictable, carrying the potential to tarnish not only Kavanaugh but also the Republican Party itself weeks before the election.

While the president, cognizant of the stakes, has mostly restrained himself from attacking Blasey publicly, he reverted to form Friday, questioning her credibility in a tweet in which he demanded to know why she or her parents had not reported the assault to law enforcement authorities if it had been “as bad as she says.” Later, at his rally in Springfield, Missouri, Trump said Kavanaugh would be confirmed because “he was born for” the Supreme Court.

His tweet drew a backlash from Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of a few moderate Republicans whose votes will determine whether Kavanaugh is confirmed. She noted that many sexual assaults are never reported, and called the president’s remark “appalling.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and the Senate majority leader, who has teamed up with Donald McGahn II, the White House counsel, to try to push through Kavanaugh’s confirmation, privately told Trump that his tweet was not helpful. And on Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the Judiciary Committee, had similar counsel.

“I would advise the president to let us handle this,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.”

McConnell has explained to the president the political reality that, as much as Republicans might want to try to quickly move past Blasey’s allegation, they must tread carefully to avoid alienating Collins or other senators who have been noncommittal about their position on the judge, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona.

With Senate Republicans holding only a 51-49 majority, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who led painstaking negotiations with Blasey’s legal team over the terms of the hearing, has been driven in large part by a desire to accommodate the concerns of senators in his own party.

“You’re dealing with two different worlds,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican consultant and former Senate aide who helped shepherd the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, last year. “Sens. McConnell and Grassley both know that they need Sens. Murkowski and Collins to get across the line, and if they decided to put their foot on the accelerator and just hold the vote, that could backfire.”

“If you’re President Trump, there’s good reasons for being frustrated by the delay,” Bonjean added, noting that many conservative activists believe that the Democrats backing Blasey are playing “a stalling game” designed to provide time to unearth more allegations against Kavanaugh or further discredit him. Some of those activists have begun to bristle publicly at what they regard as Grassley’s weakness in bowing to Blasey’s demands.

“The Republicans need to stop aiding and abetting Chuck Schumer’s extreme delay strategy,” said Penny Nance, the chief executive of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group, referring to the top Senate Democrat. “They have been more than fair to Professor Ford, and if they continue to capitulate to her lawyers, it will cost them in the November elections.”

Some prominent Republicans have indicated that they plan to back Trump’s nominee regardless of the hearing’s outcome. Speaking about Blasey’s accusation before the latest charge surfaced Sunday night, Graham said, “Unless there’s something more, no, I’m not going to ruin Judge Kavanaugh’s life over this.”

But if Blasey comes across as a compelling witness giving credible and emotional testimony of a traumatic event, Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee — all of them men — run the risk of appearing callous and chauvinistic by pressing her on details or questioning her account. Democrats are likely to question Kavanaugh about his drinking habits and social conduct — open-ended questions that people close to him say he plans to avoid answering, but that will be difficult to deflect. Democrats, too, must be careful not to appear to be dismissing Kavanaugh’s account out of hand. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, drew criticism Sunday for suggesting that the judge was not credible because of his approach to legal cases.

“How the Senate handles this and the Senate Republicans handle this will be a test of this time, of 2018, in the #MeToo movement,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said on “Meet the Press.”

Murray, who was elected in 1992 after Senate hearings on Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas, then a nominee for the Supreme Court, said the question for the Senate this week was: “Can we do better?”

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