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A Day of Broad Smiles and Raised Thumbs for Trump

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“There’s nobody with a squeaky clean past like Brett Kavanaugh,” Mr. Trump told reporters, dismissing allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against the judge.
TOPEKA, Kan. — President Trump, who has defiantly muscled his presidency through doubt, chaos and the Washington status quo, spent Saturday evening exulting in another bitter, bruising victory: a second nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, sworn in on the Supreme Court.
“There’s nobody with a squeaky clean past like Brett Kavanaugh,” Mr. Trump told reporters, dismissing allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against the judge as a “horrible attack by the Democrats.”
“He’s an outstanding man, an outstanding person,” the president said, adding that “we’re very happy.”
His celebration began in the air, when he invited reporters traveling with him to his private cabin on Air Force One to document his broad smile and double thumbs-up of triumph after the Senate’s 50-to-48 confirmation vote.
It continued after he arrived at the airport in Topeka, Kan., as he praised the F. B. I. and the Justice Department — both frequent targets of withering presidential criticism — for “incredible work” in executing a weeklong investigation into the allegations against the judge. The inquiry, he said, was ultimately “terrific for the process.”
And it culminated with a deafening crowd at a rally here at the Kansas Expocentre, in a state he won by 21 points . Mr. Trump gushed over the week’s victories — an ever-falling unemployment number, a revamped trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and Judge Kavanaugh’s swearing-in — and scorned his Democratic opponents as “screamers,” “an angry mob” and “radical.”
“You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob,” Mr. Trump said, as protesters in Washington and other cities denounced Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “You will be able to stop the radical Democrats — and that’s what they’ve become — by electing Republicans.”
“Just imagine the devastation they would cause,” he added, “if they ever obtained the power they so desperately want.”
He singled out Republicans — Senators Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins in particular — for the fervent speeches they had given in defense of Judge Kavanaugh. But beneath the celebration, the president’s resentment against his Democratic opponents over their treatment of Judge Kavanaugh bubbled up.
“Each of you will have the chance to render your verdict on the Democrats’ conduct at the ballot box,” Mr. Trump said.
He targeted Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, as “Da Nang Dick” for falsehoods about his military service during the Vietnam War. And calling her “Leaking Dianne Feinstein,” the president laced into the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee for her fumbled denial that her staff had leaked a letter laying out the first allegation of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh.
“No, no, I didn’t. I don’t think. Wait, did we leak?” Mr. Trump said, mocking Ms. Feinstein, Democrat of California, who had turned toward her aides to confirm her answer during a congressional hearing. “Was that the worst body language you’ve ever seen?”
Mr. Trump did cede the spotlight for a bit to a few Republican candidates, including Kris Kobach, the party’s nominee for governor, who is known for his hard-line immigration views and his unfounded claims on voter fraud.
“I hope he loses because I want him so badly,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Kobach, who served as vice chairman of the president’s voter fraud commission, which did not find any sign of widespread election fraud.
“But don’t do that,” he added.
The president’s rally — his fourth of the week, with four more to come next week — was in part designed to propel conservative turnout in the midterm elections next month and to maintain what Mr. Trump described as “a momentum that hasn’t been seen in years.”
But the president also extended his vision to his own re-election, listing the Democratic opponents he told the crowd he is eager to defeat: Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“I’m hitting them so hard,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, “I may get someone actually good to run against me.”
As he concluded his 70-minute speech to raucous cheers, he echoed the defiance that helped carry Judge Kavanaugh’s imperiled nomination to victory.
“We will never back down,” he said. “We will never surrender. And we will always win.”

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