Donald Trump held an 80-minute press conference on Brett Kavanaugh but barely mentioned him

And no one is remotely surprised.

The Trump-Kavanaugh scandal has dominated US politics recently, with the President’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct.

Trump spoke out at the time in response to Kavanaugh’s original accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, questioning her historic case for the fact that she didn’t file a police report for years on the alleged attack.

Deborah Ramirez later came forward with claims of sexual misconduct, and just today, a third woman has come forward, Julie Swetnick, who claimed through her lawyer Michael Avenatti that Kavanaugh was present at a party where she was ‘drugged and gang raped’.

Since then, the #BelieveSurvivors and #WhyIDidntReport movements have been gaining momentum, with high profile figures, most recently Padma Lakshmi, speaking out in support of Kavanaugh’s accusers, coming forward with historic rape allegations of their own, and explaining why they didn’t report at the time.

Yesterday it seemed that Trump had had enough, holding an impromptu solo press conference to discuss the matter where he called the claims a ‘big, fat con job’. But given that he held the press conference to discuss Kavanaugh, Trump’s choice to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, he didn’t spend too much time talking about the candidate.

It’s hardly surprising though that the words he did say about him were praise.

'This is one of the highest quality people that I have ever met,’ Trump announced of Kavanaugh. ‘And everybody that knows him says the same thing. And these (allegations) are false, to me.’

Trump then went on to use the press conference to call out his political opponents - who he spoke about far more than Kavanaugh - insisting that they were the ‘con artists’ behind these women’s allegations.

'They know it’s a big, fat con job,’ he stated. ‘And they go into a room, and I guarantee you, they laugh like hell at what they pulled off on you and on the public. They laugh like hell.’

When asked about the allegations of sexual misconduct about him, Trump responded, ‘I’ve been accused. I’ve been accused. False accusations. Excuse me. I’ve been accused. I was accused by — I think it was four women.’

He continued: ‘Excuse me. I was accused by four or five women who got paid a lot of money to make up stories about me. We caught them and the mainstream media refused to put it on television. There were four women, and maybe more, I think the number is four or five. But one had a mortgage paid off her house, $52,000. Another one had other things happen.’

‘It does impact my opinion. You know why? Because I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me,’ he went on to explain. ‘I’m a very famous person. Unfortunately, I’ve been a famous person for a long time. But I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me. Really false charges. I know friends that have had false charges. People want fame, they want money, they want whatever.’

We will continue to update this story.