Donald Trump scrambled to dig himself out from an avalanche of fresh abuse allegations on Thursday after a series of women came forward to dispute his claim that his comments about sexual assault were only empty boasts.
The torrent of accusations, which includes claims from beauty pageant contenders who allege he burst into their dressing rooms to ogle them while they were nude, added nearly a dozen new names to the tally of women who have accused the Republican nominee of inappropriate behavior.
Many say they were galvanised into speaking by Trump’s denials during Sunday’s presidential debate, where he dismissed a recording of him bragging about groping women as “locker room talk” and insisted they were “words not action”.
But with allegations to the contrary casting an ever-growing shadow over the campaign, Trump instead sought to dismiss the accusations as a vast establishment conspiracy, orchestrated by his opponent Hillary Clinton “as part of a concerted, coordinated and vicious attack”.
“There is nothing the political establishment will not do, no lie they won’t tell to hold their prestige and power at your expense and that’s what’s happening,” he told a rally in Florida. “The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election.”
After a series of initial denials in capital letters on Twitter and more than an hour after his speech was due to start, Trump launched into an hour-long attack on the media and female accusers he called “horrible, horrible liars”.
“Take a look. Look at her. Look at her words. And you tell me what you think. I don’t think so,” Trump said of Natasha Stoynoff, a People magazine reporter who alleged he had “forced his tongue down my throat”.
The New York Times, which quoted another woman alleging Trump “was like an octopus” who put his hand up her skirt on an aeroplane, was dismissed as peddling “third-rate journalism” on the instructions of the Clinton campaign. Trump threatened to sue the paper over the article.
And while the Guardian has interviewed a former beauty contestant who claimed he deliberately walked in on two young Miss USA 2001 contestants while they were naked, Trump portrayed himself as a martyr.
“I never knew it would be this vile, this vicious,” he told the crowd in Florida. “Nevertheless I take all of these slings and arrows gladly for you. I take them for the movement so we can have our country back.”
He added: “I will not allow the Clinton machine to turn our campaign into a discussion of their slanders and lies, but will remain focused on the American people. The only thing Clinton has going for her is the press. Without the press she is nothing.”
Nevertheless, his response to the new claims took up almost the entire speech and Trump refused to take questions on them, dismissing from the room a reporter who asked about them beforehand and calling him “a sleazebag”.
The New York Times dismissed his threat to sue in withering terms.
“The essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one’s reputation,” its lawyer wrote to Trump’s. “Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr Trump through his own words and actions has already created for himself.”
The campaign insisted it had evidence for bringing its legal action against the New York Times, however.
“Your article is reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se. It is apparent from, among other things, the timing of the article, that it is nothing more than a politically motivated effort to defeat Mr Trump’s candidacy,” wrote Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s lawyer.
Under the US constitution, any suit filed by Trump would be almost certain to be thrown out. American libel law as defined in the 1964 case of New York Times v Sullivan states that any public figure suing for libel must prove a defamatory statement was made with actual malice, “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not”.
Trump’s speech in Florida came as even close allies began distancing themselves.
Newt Gringrich, a leading supporter and surrogate who was considered a potential running mate, described the Republican nominee as sometimes “frankly pathetic”. “There’s a big Trump and a little Trump,” the former House speaker told Fox Business. “The little Trump is frankly pathetic.”
Amid reports that his campaign was pulling out of Virginia because it was no longer competitive there, Trump cancelled a Fox News interview planned for Thursday night that was expected to deal with charges against Bill Clinton, while his daughter Ivanka was forced to sit awkwardly during a campaign coffee event as moderators tried to avoid the subject.
Democrats also revelled in the campaign’s apparent meltdown. “This is not normal, this is not politics as usual,” Michelle Obama told a rally in New Hampshire. “I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” she said. “No woman deserves to be treated this way – none of us deserves this kind of abuse.”
I was shocked but not surprised,” Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, told ABC. “I was surprised on stage on Sunday night when he said ‘I never did it’ and wondered how many days it would be before folks came out and said he did.”
Allegations of sexual misconduct and crude treatment of women had attached themselves to Trump since launching his campaign in June. When the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly questioned him about these in the first presidential debate in August, the New York real estate developer implied her tough questioning was the result of menstruation. Trump also later attacked Republican primary opponent Carly Fiorina for being unattractive, an accusation that was also levelled at the wife of Senator Ted Cruz via a retweet on Trump’s Twitter account.
In the spring of 2016, the Boston Globe reported on Trump’s behaviour towards beauty pageant contestants and the New York Times published a detailed history of Trump’s relationships with women over decades. The reporting prompted Ivanka Trump to deny the allegations in an interview with CBS. “He’s not a groper,” said Ivanka about her father. “It’s not who he is. I’ve known my father obviously my whole life and he has total respect for women.”
Trump, who has pledged to “open up” American libel laws, has a long history of litigiousness and is known for issuing legal threats after unfavourable stories. In September, he used Twitter to threaten a suit against the New York Times for what he called “irresponsible intent” and his wife Melania is currently engaged in an active lawsuit against the Daily Mail. Trump also engaged in years of litigation with biographer Tim O’Brien in 2005, who stated Trump was nowhere near as wealthy as he claimed. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Speaking to campaign volunteers at a field office in San Francisco, Clinton said the election was defined by “two very different visions, views, and sets of values”.
“And that’s why the stakes are so high,” she added. “Because we know we’ve already learned who Donald Trump is. What we have to prove in this election is who we are and what we stand for and what we believe in.”
The Guardian October 13, 2016
