Catherine Bolder didn’t find Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee convincing. In fact, Bolder thinks Ford’s description of an assault she said she suffered 36 years ago at the hands Brett Kavanaugh was “laughable — from the innocent little girl with the messy hair act, to the fake crying and the mucousy, crackling voice.”
“Total deception,” Bolder, a resident of Macomb County, Mich., wrote to me via text message. “Tell me — where was the Kleenex?”
True to her name, Bolder’s language was bolder than that used by most of the other dozen female Trump supporters I interviewed after last Friday’s testimony. But all of the women felt that Ford’s accusation was part of a conspiracy to keep a conservative, Trump nominee off the Supreme Court.
The women criticized the rush to condemn Kavanaugh with little evidence that he had committed a crime. “I mean really, how does a woman with a PhD not know what exculpatory evidence means?” Bolder wrote of Ford, a psychology professor.
After watching Ford’s gripping testimony, Sandy Chilson of Howard County, Iowa, said she didn’t doubt that Ford had been victimized. But she also doesn’t believe Kavanaugh was involved in the assault. “There is no corroborating evidence,” she said, adding that she’s confident that if any sexual abuse or criminal activity were in Kavanaugh’s past, the FBI would have discovered it in its six previous background checks.
Gayle Mazurkiewicz also believes that Ford was assaulted but that Kavanaugh wasn’t the perpetrator. “I think she might be mistaken, and may have been mistaken for decades, in identifying her attacker,” she said.
“There ought to be some sort of restitution for defamation of Kavanaugh’s character if nothing can be proven,” Mazurkiewicz, a resident of Macomb County, Mich., added.
Cathy Kulig of Trempealeau County, Wisc., texted to say that she was “appalled” and “frustrate[ed]” by the presumption that Kavanaugh is guilty.
“I cannot understand [why] women would not be concerned about the same rush to judgment against a son, brother, husband, father or friend,” she wrote.
Several of the women questioned the last-minute release of a letter detailing the alleged assault that Ford sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “Why didn’t the Democrats bring forth the letter in July?” Lois Morales of Orange County, Calif., asked. “I am sick of politicians and their games.”
Terry Mongold of Grant County, W.Va., thinks Ford’s allegation should have been investigated many weeks ago. “I believe that Dr. Ford has been treated terribly by the Democrats,” she said.
“This is a bad, sad game from the Democrats,” Jasmine Alsabunji of Erie, Pa., wrote to me via Facebook, also questioning why Kavanaugh’s accusers waited decades before going public. Alsabunji believes mistakes made in the past should stay there.
Nahren Anweya of Macomb County, Mich., questioned Ford’s motives in coming forward with the allegation. “There was over $378,000 raised on behalf of Dr. [Ford] in a GoFundMe account during the time of the hearing,” she wrote. “That explains a lot!”
I selected my interviewees from among people I’ve met over the last year and a half for Into Trump’s America, a reporting project from nine counties that played a crucial role in the 2016 election and that will help decide whether Trump wins re-election in 2020.
Democrats have seized upon several sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh as evidence of the Republican Party’s problem with women voters. But polls show that political affiliation is a much stronger predictor than sex of one’s feelings toward Kavanaugh.
It would be easy to dismiss these women as conservative die-hards and Republican Party loyalists who would support the president’s nominee no matter who it was. But even though all the women are Trump supporters, they’re not all conservatives, or even Trump voters. The group includes a woman who voted for Bernie Sanders, another who voted for Evan McMullin, at least three former Barack Obama voters, and a Muslim immigrant who only recently gained the right to vote.
While geographically and ideologically disparate, the women are united in their belief that Kavanaugh is being treated unfairly, that President Trump should not withdraw his nomination, and that the Senate should confirm Kavanaugh.
Mongold is willing to wait for the FBI to perform its investigation. “If none of the accusations can be proven,” she said, “then I feel that Judge Kavanaugh should be confirmed and soon.”
Former Obama voter Sandi Hodgden of Volusia County, Fla., wrote that she was “disappointed and pissed” about the Democrats’ attempts to discredit Kavanaugh.
Calling the confirmation hearings “a disgrace,” Hodgden is confident that Kavanaugh will ultimately be confirmed. Trump “will succeed as he always does,” she predicted.
Daniel Allott is the author of Into Trump’s America and formerly the Washington Examiner’s deputy commentary editor.
