President Donald Trump denounced Deborah Ramirez after the former college classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh accused him of sexual misconduct in the New Yorker on Sunday.
Speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump suggested he did not believe Ramirez’s account and noted what he said were many of the problems with her claim.
“The second accuser has nothing. The second accuser doesn’t even know, she thinks maybe it could have been him, maybe not. She admits that she was drunk,” said Trump.
“She admits time lapses, there were time lapses,” he continued. “This is a person, and this is a series of statements that’s going to take one of the most talented, one of the greatest intellects from a judicial standpoint in our country going to keep him off the United States Supreme Court.”
Ramirez said that Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face without her consent while drunk at a party when they were both freshmen at Yale University. In her disclosure to the New Yorker, Ramirez admitted that she had initially been unsure if the man in her memory of the event was Kavanaugh — something critics of the story have pounced on in recent days.
The New York Times and other outlets are known to have considered but ultimately passed on publishing Ramirez’s account.
Kavanaugh has strongly denied the accusations against him from Ramirez and his original accuser, Palo Alto University psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford. Both Ford and Kavanaugh are expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.