Both the Trump White House and the Republicans of the Senate Judiciary have now made their first statements in response to the allegations of a woman who has come forward assert that Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her and that she feared for her life during the episode.
The White House's first response is, as could be expected, grotesque, with an anonymous lawyer "close to the White House" vowing that Kavanaugh's nomination will not be withdrawn.
“No way, not even a hint of it,” the lawyer said. “If anything, it’s the opposite. If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried. We can all be accused of something.”
That those in Trump's orbit believe that "we can all" be accused of violent attempted rape is both instructive and, to repeat, grotesque; it may be that within the Trump White House "every man" can be credibly accused of sexual assault but that is not true elsewhere in America. There are a great many Americans who have never been accused of attempted rape; none of them were chosen by Trump for a Supreme Court position.
Judiciary Committee Republicans are out with a formal statement consisting exclusively of questioning the "tactics and motives" of Democrats who previously "said nothing" about the accuser's allegations followed by a list of previously published links to groups vouching for Kavanaugh's character. Before Kavanaugh's accuser made her identity publicly known this morning, Republicans were still vowing to move quickly ahead with a vote to confirm his nomination. So far, no Senate Republicans have stepped forward to ask that the vote be delayed.