Even Donald Trump admits Brett Kavanaugh has a problem

| 10:50 pm EDT October 1, 2018
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Is Donald Trump publicly hedging his bets as Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination continues to circle the drain? Just as Trump was being forced to expand the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh this afternoon, thanks to a new line in the sand drawn by Jeff Flake, Trump was holding a semi-coherent press conference in the White House rose garden. Naturally he got asked about Kavanaugh, and his answer was a bit surprising.

Here’s what Donald Trump said this afternoon about Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate: “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 … this is not a man who said he is perfect with respect to alcohol.” It sounds like two things are going on here at once.

First, Trump is trying to minimize the accusations against Kavanaugh – that he was a belligerent drunk who sexually assaulted women on multiple occasions – by painting them as strictly having been about the fact that he was a drinker. That part isn’t surprising. But at the same time, Trump is making a point of acknowledging that Kavanaugh had “a little bit of difficulty” with his drinking, which is an acknowledgment that Kavanaugh had a drinking problem. Trump also highlighted the fact that Kavanaugh all but swore allegiance to beer during his testimony.

So what’s really going on here? Obviously, Donald Trump would love to find a way to salvage the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. He has a lot riding on it, thanks to the fact that he’ll eventually be asking the Supreme Court to help keep him out of prison in the Trump-Russia scandal. But at the same time, we’ve watched Trump repeatedly throw his own people overboard when things have reached a point where he felt they needed to sink for him to swim. At the least, it sounds like Trump was making a point of hedging his bets today.