WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.
"And they're determined to take back power by any means necessary. You see the meanness, the nastiness. They don't care who they hurt, who they have to run over to get power," he said.
"We're not going to give it to them," Trump said.
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 a 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.
"The entire nation has witnessed the shameless conduct of the Democrat Party," Trump said.
He issued a fresh defense of Kavanaugh, 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."
