New allegations of Donald Trump groping women are sending the Republican nominee’s floundering campaign into a tailspin, with precious few days left for the billionaire to try to salvage his presidential bid.
Already struggling under the weight of the 2005 tape in which Trump can be heard describing in vulgar terms how his celebrity status allowed him to sexually assault women with impunity, the Republican nominee’s campaign pushed back against the new charges by questioning their timing and the motivations of the accusers.
“The phony story in the failing @nytimes is a TOTAL FABRICATION. Written by same people as last discredited story on woman. WATCH!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.
He then went on a rant during his afternoon rally in West Palm Beach, Florida, reading off a teleprompter as he claimed, “these were nothing more than false smears,” “these claims are all fabricated,” and “these events never, ever happened.”
Trump attacked the integrity of his female accusers, saying “You take a look at these people…and you’ll understand also.”
Before a riled up crowd, the Republican nominee continued, calling the allegations “preposterous” and “ludicrous.” “We already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies, and it will be made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time, very soon,” he added.
In the other allegation published by The New York Times, a then-22-year-old receptionist recalled introducing herself to Trump outside a Trump Tower elevator in 2005. She said Trump shook her hand but then refused to let go as he proceeded to kiss her on the cheeks and then on the mouth. The allegation is similar to what Trump said on a now infamous tape recorded that same year, when he told Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” that, “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”
In a statement, Trump’s senior communications adviser Jason Miller wrote Wednesday night that the entire New York Times report was “fiction” and accused the newspaper of launching “a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump.”
In a letter to the Times demanding a retraction, Trump’s attorney wrote that the article is “reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se.” The reality TV star’s lawyer threatened to pursue “all available actions and remedies” if the newspaper refused to retract the story and apologize.
But the report published by the Times did not include the only such allegations of sexual assault to emerge on Wednesday. Hours after the Times report was published, People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff offered her own account of Trump forcibly kissing her in 2005 at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where she was scheduled to interview the real estate billionaire about his first year of marriage to Melania Trump. Stoynoff said in her article that she hadn’t included the incident in her original story for People because she “doubted my recollection and my reaction” and was “afraid that a famous, powerful, wealthy man could and would discredit and destroy me, especially if I got his coveted PEOPLE feature killed.”
A Trump campaign spokeswoman said Stoynoff’s allegation was “fabricated.” Trump himself tweeted on Thursday morning, “Why didn’t the writer of the twelve year old article in People Magazine mention the ‘incident’ in her story. Because it did not happen!”
The Trump campaign has not yet commented on the allegation of a fourth woman, who told the Palm Beach Post that the GOP nominee groped her 13 years ago, also at Mar-a-Lago. The billionaire is also facing an allegation from Cassandra Searles, Miss Washington 2013, whom Rolling Stone reports as saying, “He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”
And then there’s a CBS report on a 1992 “Entertainment Tonight” Christmas feature at Trump Tower in which Trump allegedly said he would be dating one of the young girls in 10 years.
Trump asks one of the girls in the video if she’s “going up the escalator.” The girl replies, “Yeah,” and Trump turns to the camera and says: “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”
The women from The New York Times, Palm Beach Post and People reports all said they were motivated to speak after Trump denied at last Sunday’s presidential debate that he had ever actually carried out the actions he described in the 2005 recording. But Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson offered an alternate theory, that the women were making public their allegations now “because 15 minutes of fame.”
In a powerful and emotional rebuke to Trump, First Lady Michelle Obama said at a campaign rally that his vulgar comments on sexual assault “have shaken me to my core,” and she called on women to rise up against the Republican nominee.
“The fact is in this election we have a candidate for president of the United States who over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning, I simply will not repeat anything here today,” she said at a rally for Clinton in New Hampshire. “And last week we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexual assaulting women. I can’t believe I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.”
Her voice breaking at times, she went on to say, “I listen to all of this and I feel it so personally, and I’m sure that many of you do, too, particularly the women,” adding, “The shameful comments about our bodies, the disrespect of our intelligence. The belief you can do anything to a woman? It is cruel. It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts.”
But Trump’s surrogates forcefully tried to dispute the allegations, with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, now a paid contributor on CNN, telling “New Day” that he suspected the allegations were politically motivated.
“If this incident had been so important to them, they could have — alleged incidents — it could have talked about this many, many, many times, many opportunities,” he said. “Look, you have an accusation from a reporter right now that has access to the media anytime they wanted to, to raise this issue should it have been an issue that she want to discuss.”
“I find it a little egregious that because Anderson asked a question and they didn’t like his answer after all of the other things, that they decide now this is my impetus to come forward,” he continued. “That is Sunday. Today is now Thursday. It took them four days?”
Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway had a harder time defending her boss over a BuzzFeed report that the former pageant owner would walk into the dressing room while contestants were changing. The GOP nominee admitted in a 2005 interview with “The Howard Stern Show” that because he owned the pageant, he was allowed to enter the dressing room and ogle the women inside.
“I am allowed to go in because I am the owner of the pageant,” he told Stern. “They’re standing there with no clothes. Is everybody OK? You see these incredible-looking women. I sort of get away with things like that.”
“You want me to comment on something he said to Howard Stern in 15 seconds 10 years ago and that somehow I am an expert on it,” Conway said when CNN anchor Brianna Keilar played the radio show clip for her during an interview Wednesday, instead accusing the network of covering only negative stories about Trump at the expense of stories that reflect badly on Clinton.
“The fact is that all you want to do, it seems, is talk about something he said 10, 15 years ago and, yet, we never, ever want to talk, particularly CNN when we offered up these women to you,” Conway said. “We never want to talk to the women shamed and blamed by Hillary Clinton because they had sexual contact with her husband. Some consensual longtime affairs including in the White House and others victims of predatory conduct.”
The new allegations threaten to further destroy an already collapsing relationship between Trump and Republican leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Monday declared that he would no longer campaign for the Republican nominee, which appeared to enrage Trump. The nominee has repeatedly laced into Ryan on the campaign trail, accusing Republican leaders of engaging in a “sinister deal” against him.
But Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich on Thursday morning said such attacks were foolhardy and beneath Trump.
“Look, first of all, let me just say about Trump, who I admire and I’ve tried to help as much as I can. There’s a big Trump and a little Trump,” Gingrich said on Fox Business Thursday morning in a comment that evoked Trump’s slam on Marco Rubio as “Little Marco.” “The little Trump is frankly pathetic. I mean, he’s mad over not getting a phone call?”
Trump at a rally in Florida on Wednesday lashed out at Ryan for not offering congratulations after Sunday night’s debate. “Instead of calling me and saying, ‘Congratulations, you did a great job, you absolutely destroyed her in the debate like everybody said,’” Trump said, as he went on to bemoan other ways he’s been jilted this election.
Gingrich on Thursday morning said Trump needs to focus his energy on Hillary Clinton and to stop being distracted.
“Donald Trump has one opponent. Her name is Hillary Clinton. Her name is not Paul Ryan. It’s not anybody else,” he said.