Many women saw Kavanaugh as unfairly accused, could be ‘our husbands, our sons’: Trump counselor

President Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway said that many women viewed Brett Kavanaugh as unfairly accused, and “saw in him possibly our husbands, our sons, our cousins, our co-workers, our brothers.”

Conway in an interview with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl on “This Week” Sunday pushed back against the notion that women are upset about the Senate’s confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Saturday amid allegations of sexual misconduct and sexual assault against him.

“A lot of women, including me, in America looked up and saw a man who was, is a [victim of]… political character assassination. And, also, we looked up and saw in him possibly our husbands, our sons, our cousins, our co-workers, our brothers,” Conway said.

Kavanaugh was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice late Saturday after a tense 50-to-48 vote in the Senate that was repeatedly interrupted by protesters shouting in the gallery against senators voting to confirm him.

His nomination had been rocked by decades-old sexual misconduct allegations against him. Christine Blasey Ford alleged he sexually assaulted her at a small house party when they were both teens. A former Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh’s alleged he exposed himself to her at a college party where there was drinking.

Kavanaugh strongly and categorically denied all accusations of sexual misconduct.

Fred Schilling/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via AP

Conway also slammed the media for, she said, framing a general narrative around sexual misconduct in which every woman is a victims.

“Let’s stop pretending that there’s moral authority by some, including many in your industry,” the counselor to the president said. “I didn’t say you, but many in your industry have lost their moral authority to pretend that they were looking for the truth, that they were on some kind of fact-finding mission, when … they’re not even covering his testimony that he has denied under oath that this has happened and they want every woman to be a victim, every woman to lock arms and … every man is a perpetrator.”

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She continued, “We can’t live in a country where democracy and the First Amendment and due process and fairness and the presumption of innocence thrive” with such presumptions.

Conway also said that no Supreme Court nominee “has been more picked apart” than Kavanaugh, except possibly Justice Clarence Thomas, who was also accused of sexual misconduct during his confirmation process.

Karl asked Conway if she was concerned that Kavanaugh may be seen as tainted by the roughly half the country who opposed his nomination.

“Justice Kavanaugh should not be seen as tainted,” she said. “He should be seen as somebody who went through seven FBI investigations, including just in this last week, another one that was completed this past July; had answered 1,200 written questions; had produced about a million pages of documents, submitted himself to about 33 or 35 hours of sworn testimony to the Senate.”

She added, “The Supreme Court, thank God, is a sacrosanct institution that can withstand much, and it will withstand the fact that there were a lot of political machinations” in the confirmation process for Kavanaugh.