Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said at an event Wednesday he didn’t like President Donald Trump’s mockery of Christine Blasey Ford at a rally Tuesday night, adding that the South Carolina Republican “would tell him to knock it off.”
“Sometimes people are accused of something they didn’t do,” Graham said Wednesday at the “Atlantic Festival,” in Washington. “So President Trump went through a factual rendition, that I didn’t particularly like, and I would tell him to knock it off. You’re not helping. But it can be worse, you can actually kill somebody’s cat, and puncture their tires to get them to shut up.”
Graham, an ardent supporter of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, has been one of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s fiercest proclaimers of his innocent against Ford’s sexual assault allegations.
Tuesday night at a campaign rally, Trump mocked parts Ford’s testimony in front of thousands of his laughing supporters and disparaged her for remembering that she had one beer at the high school party where she says Kavanaugh assaulted her but not how she got to the party and home. Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied all allegations.
“I don’t like what the President said last night, I’m the first person to say I want to hear from Dr. Ford, I thought she was handled respectfully,” Graham said. “I thought Kavanaugh was treated like crap.”
Graham’s defense of Kavanaugh elicited a chorus of boos from the crowd, to which he replied, “Yeah, well, boo yourself.”
This follows angry comments from the South Carolina Republican at last week’s hearing, where he accused Democrats of intentionally destroying Kavanaugh’s life to hold the Supreme Court seat open.
“Boy, you guys want power,” he said at the time. “God, I hope you never get it.”
Graham continued to defend his friend Wednesday.
“I really believe Kavanaugh is not a gang rapist, a sexual predator, or a stumbling bumbling drunk,” he said, adding, “I believe it because I’ve known him for 20 years.”