WASHINGTON �� President Donald Trump watched Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation as he flew on Air Force One to Kansas, and said he was "100 percent certain" that Christine Blasey Ford, who accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault, "named the wrong person."
Trump watched the Senate vote on Fox News.
The president flashed two "thumbs up" when the vote was called 50 to 48 in favor of Trump's second Supreme Court nominee. "I appreciate those 50 great votes," he said.
Trump said Kavanaugh is "going to go down as a totally brilliant Supreme Court justice for many years," and praised the nominee's temperament and past judicial service. He is, said Trump, "a brilliant scholar."
"We're honored that he was able to withstand these horrible, horrible attacks by the Democrats," he said.
Kavanaugh overcame allegations of school-age sexual assault and claims by Democrats he was dishonest in Senate hearings. He was sworn in Saturday in a private ceremony.
Trump said it was a "total misnomer" that women were angry about Kavanaugh's confirmation. "Women, I feel, were in many ways stronger in his favor," Trump said. He then made similar comments to those he made in the past two days: that women demonstrating against Kavanaugh had been paid to do so.
The president said he had no doubt that Ford, a California professor, had named the wrong person as her assailant in an attack she said took place while she and Kavanaugh were in high school.
"There's no one with a squeaky clean past like Brett Kavanaugh," Trump said. "I'm very honored to have chosen him."
Earlier, outside the White House, Trump said that he feels "very strongly that, in the end, maybe the process was really unattractive, but the extra week was something that I think was really good." That was in reference to the additional FBI investigation before the Senate pressed ahead on the nominee. "A lot of very positive things happened in the last week. It didn't look that way, but in the end that's what happened."
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