Bloomberg
Republican Donald Trump ripped the New York Times and a People magazine writer Thursday after they published claims that he sexually assaulted women before he ran for president.
The Times story published Wednesday is a “TOTAL FABRICATION,” Trump said on Twitter, his favored medium to respond to critics.
Two women said on the record that Trump touched them inappropriately in the 1980s and in 2005, according to the Times, a regular punching bag for Trump that also drew his ire when it reported in May on other questionable behavior by Trump toward women.
Addressing the People magazine story, in which the writer said Trump forced himself on her in 2005 when she was interviewing him, Trump said the writer didn’t mention the incident in her story at the time “because it did not happen!”
The magazine writer, Natasha Stoynoff, wrote that she didn’t mention the assault in the story because “I was ashamed and blamed myself for his transgression” and “I doubted my recollection and my reaction. I was afraid that a famous, powerful, wealthy man could and would discredit and destroy me, especially if I got his coveted PEOPLE feature killed.”
The women’s claims are the latest blow to Trump’s hopes of defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton for the White House in the Nov. 8 election.
His poll numbers turned sharply downward after his first debate with Clinton on Sept. 26. Then, on Oct. 7, The Washington Post unearthed a recording of Trump talking on a hot mic in 2005 about groping women without invitation and being able to “do anything” to women because of his fame.
The same day, CNN published a 2005 radio interview in which Trump said that owning beauty pageants meant he could go backstage to see women naked under the auspices of “inspecting” things. Several women who were teenage pageant contests have said they recall Trump doing that; some declined to be named. Others surveyed by BuzzFeed News said they didn’t recall Trump doing that.
Trump apologized for his hot-mic comments, said they were mere “locker-room talk” that didn’t represent who he is, and said in the Oct. 9 presidential debate that he hadn’t done the things he talked about doing in the recording. The tape drove a wave of Republicans to withdraw their support — with some even calling for Trump to quit the race — though some of those lawmakers have since reversed and said they’ll still vote for him.
In addition to the Times and People reports Wednesday, the Palm Beach Post identified a women who said Trump groped her 13 years ago, and CBS News reported that a 1992 video of an “Entertainment Tonight” appearance at Trump Tower shows the billionaire eyeing a girl and saying he’d be dating her in 10 years.
Trump’s lawyers have asked the Times to retract its story and apologize or else face legal action, according to a letter released by the Trump campaign Wednesday.
Trump and his allies have tried to regain the upper hand on Clinton by saying she attacked women who have accused her husband, former President Bill Clinton, of sexual misconduct.
“We’re going to turn him into Bill Cosby,” Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon told staffers about Bill Clinton, according to two advisers who were present, starting with a Thursday night appearance on Fox News by three women who have accused the former president of misconduct.
They’ve also highlighted hacked e-mails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta that WikiLeaks has been releasing in batches since Friday, which Republicans say illustrate Clinton’s untrustworthiness.
The Clinton campaign has declined to verify the e-mails and has blamed Russian state-sponsored hackers for working with WikiLeaks to help Trump. The U.S. government has publicly blamed Russia for the hacking of Democratic groups this year.
