Trump's SC pick Kavanaugh tearfully denies sex assault allegation

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump's U.S. Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh tearfully denied on Thursday a university professor’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her 36 years ago in a day of dramatic testimony that gripped the country.

Christine Blasey Ford appeared in public for the first time to detail her allegation against Kavanaugh, a conservative federal appeals court judge chosen by U.S. President Donald Trump for a lifetime job on the top U.S. court.

Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee she feared Kavanaugh would rape and accidentally kill her during the alleged assault in 1982, when both were high school students in Maryland.

At the beginning of the day, Fords was asked if she was sure that Kavanaugh was the one who sexually assaulted her 36 years ago. She said she was “100 percent certain” it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her.

Kavanaugh testified after Ford finished her appearance, claiming he was the victim of “grotesque and obvious character assassination” orchestrated by Senate Democrats. He said he “unequivocally and categorically” denied Ford’s allegation and vowed he would not back down.

At the end of the day, Kavanaugh was asked if he was certain he had not sexually assaulted Ford. “One hundred percent,” he said.

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh added.

With millions of Americans alternately riveted and horrified by the televised drama, Blasey and Kavanaugh left no room for compromise, no possibility of confusion, no chance that they remembered something differently. In effect, they asked senators to choose which one they believed. And in that moment, these two 100 percent realities came to embody a society divided into broader realities so disparate and so incompatible that it feels as if two countries are living in the borders of one.

It has become something of a cliche to say that the United States has become increasingly tribal in the era of President Donald Trump, with each side in its own corner, believing what it chooses to believe and looking for reinforcement in the media and politics. But the battle over Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination has reinforced those divisions at the intersection of sex, politics, power and the law.