GOP/NOMINATION/SUPREME COURT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a Republican golden boy with insider connections, had seemed so inevitable that in May 2016 when then-candidate Donald Trump released his first list of Supreme Court possibilities, journalists and political commentators seized on the absence of Kavanaugh’s name. The list ‘omits two of the biggest stars of the conservative legal world,’ the Associated Press reported, referring to Kavanaugh and former George W. Bush solicitor general Paul Clement. For years it was practically a Washington parlor game: Who would be first to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh, a veteran of a prominent US appeals court, or Clement, a high-profile appellate lawyer? By November 2017, President Trump overcame whatever resistance he had to Kavanaugh, the Washington-area native who, as a top aide to President George W. Bush, embodied the GOP establishment that Trump had railed against. Kavanaugh’s name was added to the list. Then, it was just a matter of time. Justice Anthony Kennedy, to whom Kavanaugh had been a law clerk, announced his retirement on June 27. On July 9, Trump tapped Kavanaugh in a primetime TV announcement.”
–Joan Biskupic, “A presumption of perfection derails Trump’s sure bet,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, September 24, 2018 12:51 pm