fbi did conduct a background investigation into you before we were aware of these most recent allegations. so, are you willing to ask the white house to do that? and say yes or no and we can move on. six backgrounds over 26 years sir, as it relates to the recent allegations, are you willing to have them do it? the witness testimony is before you. no witness who was there supports that i was there okay, i m going to take that as a no. did you watch dr. ford s testimony? i did not. i plan to. thank you. i plan to, but i did not. y i was preparing mine. at the end of the day, donald trump sent this out. quote, judge kavanagh showed america exactly why i nominated him. his testimony was powerful, honest and riveting. democrats search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham, an effort to delay, obstruct and resist. the senate must vote. white house deputy press te secretary raj shaw added this. the president was thrilled
it s a close call. you leave with doubts whichever way. that s the nature of this. there s no way you can leave certain you re completely right, he s right, she s wrong, she s right, he s wrong. i mean, you re never certain. you just do the best you can. that s what we re trying to do. back with us, robert costa, cynthia alksne, mimi rocha, steve schmidt. robert, not since the heart injection and pulp fiction have i seen someone spring to life the way senator graham did today. it was right after dick durbin, you ll forgive the phrase, drew blood on the subject of the fbi. and let s face something here. it s a town of a lot of whispering and a lot of cynicism and people, as soon as they
simple. do you feel better or worse about america than before this day started? worse. this was a disgrace that we witnessed today. the united states senate, brian, the formerly known as the world s greatest deliberative body and we ve seen for 30 plus years a cycle of revenge and retribution in our judicial nominations that came to this moment today. and i think about kids who you would admonish playing with matches. and for purposes of the analogy, the united states senators are the kids. and today the kids playing with matches literally burned the house down. and so enormous damage was done to the institution of the supreme court today, to the process, to the united states senate.su i think the american people look at this and they re shocked by
additional accusations, as no doubt was expected, if not planned, came a long series of false last-minute smears designed to scare me and drive me out of the process before any hearing occurred. i m never going to get my reputation back. my life is totally and permanently altered. this drama that played out on the hill today may not stop or even stall brett kavanagh s supreme court nomination. republican senators met tonight to decide how to move forward. the verdict, no change to the schedule. judiciary committee expected to vote tomorrow morning 9:30 a.m. here in the east. full senate will likely take up the nomination within the next few days as early as saturday. with us tonight to talk about all of it, former u.s. attorney joyce vance who spent 25 years as a federal prosecutor. eugene robinson, pulitzer prize winning columnist for the washington post, and michael steele, former republican
heard lindsey graham, thought this was an audition for a cabinet position, perhaps justice, perhaps pentagon at some point in the future. i ll tell you what it was, brian. someone who was at the capital all day reporting, it was revealing. it was revealing about the republican party. what a split screen. senator graham versus senator flake. senator graham just like judge kavanagh, taking the advice of president trump, following the model of president trump, defiant, fight, total political war in this charged america that we re all living through and covering. and then there s retiring republican jeff flake of arizona, reluctant to embrace that kind of turn in the republican party, that kind of war mentality when it comes to american politics, unsure of how he s going to vote. it s just a split republican party in how they re coming down on this. for now it s that graham/trump approach, that aggression that s fueling senators inside the gop.