Trump officials privately mocked the Maine Republican in the run-up to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, predicting it’d be easy to get the pro-choice senator to vote for a seemingly anti-choice nominee
When the Supreme Court’s draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, Sen. Susan Collins said she was flabbergasted, deeply troubled, even shocked. After all, soon-to-be-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had promised her in 2018 that Roe was a matter of settled law — despite his deeply conservative track record on abortion.
Turns out, Collins wasn’t just wrong about Kavanaugh. She was deliberately manipulated by Trump administration officials — and a future Supreme Court Justice — who viewed her as an easy mark.
Some administration officials who worked on the Kavanaugh confirmation privately mocked Collins and her public posturing over Roe, the sources recalled, often with crass language such as calling her a “cheap date.”
Two former senior Trump White House officials tell Rolling Stone that the pro-choice Collins wasn’t even considered a serious threat to the devoutly conservative Kavanaugh. Instead, the team predicted she’d need only a vague assurance that the nominee would uphold the half-century-old ruling defending abortion rights.
And they were right.