WASHINGTON: US Senate leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday hailed the confirmation of divisive judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as his “proudest moment” in the upper house as the warring Republicans and Democrats turned their focus to the crucial midterm elections.

Kavanaugh was confirmed to the court on Saturday by a razor-thin margin in the Senate, ending months of partisan rancor over his nomination and offering Donald Trump one of the biggest victories of his presidency.

“I’m proud of my colleagues, this is an important day for the United States Senate,” McConnell told political magazine show Fox News on Sunday. Asked if it was his proudest moment since he first entered the Senate in 1984, the 76-year-old replied: “I think so. I think the most important thing the Senate is involved in is the personnel business.

“Of the various 1,200 appointments who come to us for confirmation, obviously the most important are the lifetime appointments to the courts and we prioritise handling President Trump’s outstanding nominees for the Supreme Court.”

Kavanaugh was sworn in shortly after the Senate voted 50-48 in his favour — a move that cemented the high court’s shift to the right under the Republican leader, who has chosen two of the nine sitting justices.

Protesters rallied in Washington and other US cities against the ascent of the 53-year-old jurist, who has faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and been criticised for his angry partisan rhetoric.

“The mob descended on Capitol Hill and tried to intimidate our members into opposing this good man’s nomination. We stood up to the mob,” McConnell said, rejecting the notion that the process had “broken” the Senate.

‘Tremendous victory’: Trump

President Donald Trump at a Kansas rally celebrated the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, condemning Democrats for what he called a “shameless campaign of political and personal destruction” against his nominee.

To cheers of supporters at the Kansas Expocentre in Topeka, Trump declared it an “historic night”, not long after signing the paperwork to make Kavanaugh’s status official.

“I stand before you today on the heels of a tremendous victory for our nation,” he said to roars, thanking Republican senators for refusing to back down “in the face of the Democrats’ shameless campaign of political and personal destruction”.

The final vote took place Saturday afternoon as the president was flying to Kansas aboard Air Force One, and he invited travelling reporters to his private office to watch the climactic roll call, which was interrupted several times by protesters in the Senate galleries before Capitol Police removed them.

When it was official, Trump delivered a double thumbs-up from his desk. Several aides applauded.

“Very, very good,” Trump said. “Very happy about it. Great decision. I very much appreciate those 50 great votes and I think he’s going to go down as a totally brilliant Supreme Court Justice for many years.”

Trump, throughout the day, insisted Kavanaugh would not be tainted by the sexual assault allegations from Christine Blasey Ford and others that nearly tanked his nomination. Trump said he was “100 per cent” certain Kavanaugh was innocent.

“I have no doubt,” Trump said, telling reporters that he had chosen Kavanaugh, in part, because “there’s nobody with a squeaky-clean past like Brett Kavanaugh.”

Asked by reporters aboard Air Force One what message he had for women across the country who feel the nomination sends a message that their allegations of sexual assault aren’t believed, Trump disagreed with the premise, saying women “were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh” and “were in many ways stronger than the men in his favour”. “We have a lot of women that are extremely happy a tremendous number because they’re thinking of their sons, they’re thinking of their husbands and their brothers and their uncles and others and women are, I think, extremely happy,” he added.--Agencies

He said the FBI had done seven background investigations and argued that, had there been an issue, it would have surfaced sooner.

“If there was even a scintilla of something wrong he was a very big judge for many years on what they call the second highest court that would have come out loud and clear,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2018