President Donald Trump openly mocked Christine Blasey Ford’s Senate testimony and the broader Me Too movement against sexual assault Tuesday night at his rally in Southaven, Mississippi.
In an angry rant, Trump blatantly doubted professor Blasey’s accusations against his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as his supporters chanted, “We want Kavanaugh!”
“So many different charges,” Trump said of Kavanaugh. “Guilty until proven innocent .... That’s very dangerous for our country. I have it myself all the time. Let it happen to me. Shouldn’t happen to him.”
“What he’s going through, 36 years ago this happened,” the president added, referencing Blasey’s testimony at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which she claimed Kavanaugh attacked her when they were teenagers.
Trump then mocked Blasey directly:
“I had one beer, right? I had one beer! How did you get home? I don’t remember. How’d you get there? I don’t remember. Where’s the place? I don’t remember. ...
“Upstairs, downstairs, I don’t know. But I had one beer. That’s the only thing I remember.”
Blasey, 51, gave emotional testimony on Thursday, recalling the details of the night she claims Kavanaugh drunkenly held her down and tried to forcibly remove her clothes at a gathering in the 1980s.
While Blasey couldn’t recall certain details, such as the house’s exact location or how she got home, she did remember Kavanaugh and his friend’s “uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
Blasey is the first of three women who have publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. In the weeks that followed Blasey’s allegation, Deborah Ramirez accused Kavanaugh of thrusting his penis in her face while they were at a party as undergraduates in college. Julie Swetnick has accused him of being present during a “gang rape” at a party in 1982.
Trump on Tuesday defended Kavanaugh’s reputation and argued that Kavanaugh ― and men in general ― were the real victims.
“A man’s life is shattered,” Trump said of the judge.
“They destroy people,” he later added, referring to Democrats who support the accusations made by survivors of sexual assault. “These are really evil people.”
During the rant against Kavanaugh’s accusers, Trump spoke more broadly about men who are being accused of sexual harassment and violence and blamed Democrats for the movement against the harassment.
“It’s a damn sad situation,” he said. “We better start as a country getting smart and getting tough and not letting that stuff ― right back there, those cameras ― tell us how to live our lives.”
“Think of your son. Think of your husband,” Trump continued. “I’ve had many false accusations. I’ve had so many. When I say it didn’t happen, nobody believes me.”
He later added, “The Democrat Party has become too extreme. And too dangerous to be trusted with power.”
Blasey’s attorney Michael R. Bromwich called Trump’s speech a “vicious, vile and soulless attack” on his client.
“Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well,” he tweeted. “She is a remarkable profile in courage. He is a profile in cowardice.”
In his at times angry testimony on Thursday, Kavanaugh denied the accusations made against him, presenting his high school calendars as proof.
Kavanaugh said the allegation was part of a “calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”
This article has been updated with comment from Blasey’s attorney.