BRETT KAVANAUGH/GOP/HEARING/SENATE/SEX ABUSE/SUPREME COURT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Washington day like no other, President Donald Trump found himself in an unusual spot: publicly absent from a melodrama gripping the nation. Closeted in his third-floor White House residence, he avoided opportunities to comment on the proceedings occurring two miles away on Capitol Hill. But nearing the end of a more-than-eight-hour hearing stamped by unusually raw displays of human emotion and political drama, the President was telling aides and confidants that he believed his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had successfully acquitted himself from accusations of sexual assault and was one step closer to being installed on the highest bench…The President had spent most of the previous week enraged, in public and private, at how the man he selected to reshape the ideological bent of the Supreme Court was being maligned. He decried Senate Republicans for not pushing for a vote on his nominee’s confirmation before the allegations emerged. He was dismayed by a timid defense offered by Kavanaugh himself during a leaden interview with Fox News.”
–Kevin Liptak, Kaitlan Collins, Sarah Westwood, Jim Acosta and Jeff Zeleny, “Frustrated Trump turns optimistic on Kavanaugh,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, September 27, 2018 7:26 pm