President Donald Trump said that although Brett Kavanaugh had “difficulty” with alcohol when he was younger, it shouldn’t be held against him now.
The problem is, Kavanaugh has strenuously denied that he abused alcohol as a teenager. Trump is undercutting his own Supreme Court nominee’s defense against sexual assault allegations leveled against him by Christine Blasey Ford.
Trump said he tuned in to last week’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and said he saw “a man saying that he did have difficulty as a young man with drink.”
“I graduated from high school, and while I did not drink, I saw a lot of people drinking,” Trump said at a Monday press conference. “They drink beer and they would go crazy, they were in high school, they were 16, 17 years old. And I saw a lot of it. Does that mean that they can’t do something that they want to do with their life?”
“I really believe that he was very strong on the fact that he drank a lot and so I don’t know where there would be a big discrepancy,” Trump added.
Blasey has said that when they were teenagers, Kavanaugh locked her in a room and sexually assaulted her. She said that he and his friend, Mark Judge, who was present for the assault, were “drunkenly laughing during the attack” and “seemed to be having a good time.”
Deborah Ramirez has also alleged that while she and Kavanaugh were students at Yale, he drunkenly exposed himself to her. Another classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, Charles Ludington, said he remembers Kavanaugh would become “belligerent and angry” when drunk.
But Kavanaugh has strongly denied having a problem with alcohol, saying he just drank beer occasionally, like everyone else.
My friends and I sometimes got together and had parties on weekends. The drinking age was 18 in Maryland for most of my time in high school, and was 18 in D.C. for all of my time in high school. I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer.
But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone. There is a bright line between drinking beer, which I gladly do, and which I fully embrace, and sexually assaulting someone, which is a violent crime. If every American who drinks beer or every American who drank beer in high school is suddenly presumed guilty of sexual assault, will be an ugly, new place in this country. I never committed sexual assault.
There are also other hints that Kavanaugh may have been a heavier drinker than he has let on.
Apparently, Kavanaugh’s protests that he was a moderate drinker who never once passed out from a hard night partying didn’t even convince the president.