Trump commends Kavanaugh for admitting he had a drinking problem. There’s just one problem.
Putting words in his mouth.

During a news conference on Monday, President Trump commended Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh for admitting he had a drinking problem in high school, and questioned whether sexual assaults committed by teenagers should disqualify them from public service 36 years later.

“I watched him, I was surprised how vocal he was about the fact that he likes beer, and he’s had a little bit of difficulty,” Trump said at one point. “He talked about things that happened when he drank, I mean — this is not a man who said he is perfect with respect to alcohol.”

---------------

There’s just one problem — Kavanaugh admitted to neither of those things during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday. Although he mentioned beer an astounding 29 times during the hearing, Kavanaugh insisted he did not and does not have a drinking problem.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-kavanaugh-high-school-drinking-news-conference-5ea9cb870556/

?quality=90&auto=webp

That choice confronts any public figure, but judges are constrained in their permissible responses. It is true the accusations have indelibly tainted Judge Kavanaugh. That the truth appears to be unknowable with objective certainty adds an element of tragedy to the situation.

But it is equally true that Judge Kavanaugh’s response to the allegations has tainted his qualifications for the office he seeks. If he is confirmed, it will also taint the institution he hopes to join and not only because his opponents — they, too, are combatants in this continual war — will use it to question every vote he casts on the court that even vaguely touches on a political issue.

There is, again, no glory to be had. Perhaps the F.B.I. will uncover useful evidence about what happened 36 years ago. But to advise and consent to his nomination, the issue the Senate must resolve is not merely how Brett Kavanaugh behaved in 1982. It is how Judge Kavanaugh comported himself in 2018, on television. Whatever else we can say, he did not act like a justice of the highest court in the land.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/kavanaugh-supreme-court-senate-hearing.html?action=click&module=Trending&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer&contentCollection=Trending

An anonymous woman accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of repeatedly raping her while they were both teenagers, it emerged Monday.

Kavanaugh, she says, lifted her sweater and bra and digitally penetrated her, and then violently raped her 'several times' along with a friend who followed suit – before striking her and saying no one would believe her if she talked publicly about it.

'Be a good girl,' she claims Kavanaugh told her.

It's the third such claim – and by far the most aggressive one – to reach the Senate Judiciary Committee without a name attached, and without citing the place or time of an allegation.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6227585/Jane-Doe-accuses-Brett-Kavanaugh-raping-times-calls-B-S.html

https://nypost.com/video/bar-patrons-thought-this-mans-shirt-was-racist-so-they-beat-him-up/

on whether Kavanaugh was a drunk and lied under oath about it.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/30/politics/fbi-brett-kavanaugh-investigation/index.html

https://twitter.com/Brasilmagic/status/1046518986530312195

https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1046511108796895233

Latino Voters Are Making the Democrats Sweat
They don’t like Trump or Republicans. The question is how many will turn out in November.

Democrats see their fortunes rising with constituencies they’ll need to run up big victories in the midterm elections. They expect to do especially well with suburban women, even non-college-educated women, and are optimistic about millennials and a decent turnout by African-Americans.

They’re concerned, however, about Latinos, especially men. Latinos are likely to vote Democratic, but the issue is whether they’ll turn out in sufficient numbers for Democrats to win key races.

“I think there will be a modest uptick in the Latino vote,” said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a political scientist at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas who studies immigration and Latino political influence. That would be good news for Democrats, but not the great news they hope for.

That vote will be critical in the uphill battle to win control of the Senate. Of the 10 states with the most competitive Senate races, four — Florida, Texas, Arizona and Nevada — have sizable but quite different Hispanic populations. There’s a large Cuban-American community in Florida that has tended to favor Republicans, while Democratic-leaning unions play a bigger role with Nevada’s Latino voters, who are mostly of Mexican descent.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-30/midterm-election-democrats-fret-about-latino-voter-turnout

https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/1046201998280810496