Trump defends Kavanaugh’s drinking by saying he’s seen Democrats in “very bad situations”

President Donald Trump, a famous teetotaler, described Brett Kavanaugh’s high school beer stories as “pretty amazing” before threatening an unnamed Democratic senator Trump says has been witnessed in some “very, very bad situations.” The president also implied Kavanaugh had “difficulty as a young man” with drinking, although Kavanaugh, who’s admitted only that he “likes beer,” has never said that himself.

Reporters grilled Trump Monday on the scope of the FBI investigation into claims of sexual assault and misconduct against Kavanaugh during a press conference on a new trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Multiple classmates from Kavanaugh’s college years at Yale University have stepped forward to refute Kavanaugh’s claims that he never blacked out or vomited from drinking, though it’s not clear whether investigators are probing his alleged drinking habits. Trump said he doesn’t want the FBI to “go on a witch hunt” against Kavanaugh, but he told reporters he hopes they’ll move quickly and be respectful to “the doctor,” Christine Blasey Ford, the research psychologist who's alleged Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a teen party in the early 1980s. The president also said he doesn’t mind if the investigators interview all three women who have publicly accused Kavanaugh of assault, but suggested that if Kavanaugh had been so belligerent, it would’ve been well-known throughout his judicial career. Then he mentioned the supposed dirt on an unnamed Democrat, and spoke at length about Sen. Richard Blumenthal leading voters to believe that he was a Vietnam veteran.

“Even if you were going to bring up some of the subjects that were brought up, they didn’t have to treat him so viciously and violently as they’ve treated him,” Trump said of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Still, the subject matter didn’t seem to bother Trump, who's been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women and doesn’t drink, as his brother, Fred Trump, died an alcoholic at age 43 in 1981. "I can honestly say I never had a beer in my entire life,” Trump said during the news conference. “It's one of my only good traits."

Cover image: WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 01: U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (L) and Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner (R) join U.S. President Donald Trump as he holds a press conference to discuss a revised U.S. trade agreement with Mexico and Canada in the Rose Garden of the White House on October 1, 2018 in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.