After acting more or less like an adult for a couple of days, the Celebrity Apprentice President turns to Twitter to lash out at Christine Blasey Ford for daring to disrupt his Supreme Court party.
When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s identity was leaked and she decided she had to come forward with her story about Brett Kavanaugh trying to rape her when they were both in high school, everyone in Washington knew she’d have to be treated carefully. Mainly, they understood that they would have to act as if they believed her, and they would have to pretend to respect her as a woman, and not go down the Anita Hill road like they did in 1991. Mainly, this meant somehow stopping the president from tweeting something insulting or demeaning at her.
To the amazement of all observers, Donald seemed to be standing down, and not punching back hard, as is his wont. His aides must have told him that the fix was in for Kavanaugh no matter what Ford’s charges were or how credible she appeared, and hassling her would only make him look mean-spirited and might even hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
Then, as lawyers for Dr. Ford negotiated with the Senate judiciary committee on the terms for her to testify, this happened:
I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2018
And this:
The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW. Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2018
This is the President of the United States calling a woman a liar because as a 15-year-old girl she might have been too frightened, confused and ashamed to tell anyone about what had happened to her. And for good measure getting in a snide dig at her “loving parents,” too. By now, everyone, including Donald Trump, knows that sexual assault is the least-reported crime. For many reasons, victims keep these traumas to themselves.
So it was just a gratuitous attack on a citizen. Sure, Dr. Ford is a Democrat, so Trump sees her — as he does the press, the Attorney General, the Muslim faithful, immigrants and anyone who didn’t vote for him — as “an enemy of the people.” But despite Kavanaugh being the least popular SCOTUS nominee since they began keeping track of such things, there is about a 99% chance that the Republicans will get their nominee confirmed, so Trump’s poor impulse control gains him and the GOP nothing, and in fact will probably alienate many women voters, not to mention loving parents around the country, and remind them how much they dislike the president, just in time for the midterms.