Trump lashes out against ‘false smears’ over sexual behaviour

Donald Trump pushed back aggressively against what he called "false smears" from women who alleged sexual transgressions by the Republican presidential candidate.

A wave of new claims of inappropriate behaviour - in one case with a 10-year-old girl - has emerged, threatening the Republican presidential nominee’s already fragile campaign less than a month before election day.

Ever since video of the real estate mogul surfaced on Friday showing him bragging about how he could grab women’s genitals with impunity, more and more women have come forward to claim they were demeaned and touched inappropriately.

In response to the allegations, First Lady Michelle Obama declared “it doesn’t matter what party you belong to, no woman deserves to be treated this way”.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday night that Mr Trump had touched two women inappropriately, groping them and kissing them forcefully in ways that echoed the boasts of being able to sexually assault women that he made in a 2005 video that was unearthed last week.

Other news organisations, including the Palm Beach Post, BuzzFeed and People magazine, reported stories about women who had similar encounters with Mr Trump, who has said that he never acted on his “locker-room talk“ in the 2005 video.

The list of new allegations against Mr Trump includes:

- Two Miss USA contestants who claimed Mr Trump deliberately walked in on them when they were naked in a dressing room.

- Two women who allege Mr Trump groped or kissed them without consent - one in the first-class seat of an aircraft.

- A claim by a woman that she was groped at a Trump event at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida.

- A People magazine reporter who says Mr Trump forced himself on her shortly before she was due to interview him and his wife in 2005.

- An incident in which Mr Trump appears to sexualise a young girl.

In a series of messages posted on Twitter on Thursday, Mr Trump said that the story in the New York Times was a “total fabrication“ and denied the incident described by Natasha Stoynoff, the writer for People magazine, who said that he forced his tongue down her throat while she was working on an assignment about his first anniversary with his wife, Melania.

The encounter with the young girl surfaced in a video of a 1992 Entertainment Tonight Christmas special in which Mr Trump appeared, according to CBS News. Mr Trump was 46 at the time.

The holiday show was filmed at Trump Tower and includes a group of 10-year-old girls. Mr Trump asks one if she is going up the escalator. When she tells him she is, he looks at the camera and says to the home audience: “I’m going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”

On Friday, a 2005 instalment of Access Hollywood was leaked to the Washington Post showing Trump laughing with host Billy Bush about how being famous allowed him to kiss and grope women without their consent.

Mr Trump dismissed the comments as nothing more than "locker-room banter" and insisted during Sunday's debate with Hillary Clinton that he had not actually done any of the things he described.

At a rally in West Palm Beach, Florida, Mr Trump lashed out at the media for buttressing Hillary Clinton‘s campaign, calling the reports about his inappropriate behavior “false smears”.

“Anyone who challenges them is deemed a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and morally deformed,” he said of the media, repeatedly singling out the New York Times.

“They will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation,” Mr Trump said. “They will lie, lie, lie and they will do worse than that.”

Trump also threatened to take legal action in response to the new allegations and warned through his lawyer that he might sue the New York Times for libel if it did not retract the article and apologise.

“Your article is reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se,” Marc E Kasowitz, Mr Trump‘s lawyer, wrote in a letter to newspaper. “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.”

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for newspaper, said in a statement, “We stand by the story, which falls clearly into the realm of public service journalism.”

In letter to Mr Kasowitz, the newspaper rebuffed his threats to sue.The Clinton campaign said that the latest revelations were more evidence that Mr Trump is unfit to be president and that they showed that he lied on the debate stage on Sunday night.

At a rally in New Hampshire, Michelle Obama, the first lady, ripped into Mr Trump and said that his treatment of women was a sign of weakness. “We simply cannot endure this or expose our children to it any longer, not for another minute let alone another four years,” she said.

“Now is the time to stand up and say enough is enough.”

The Trump campaign has been thrown into turmoil by the allegations and the damage that the video has done to his standing with women and with the Republican leaders who have disavowed him or revoked their endorsements.

National and state polls show Mr Trump‘s support has cratered in the last two weeks. In an effort to turn things around, he has stepped up his personal attacks on Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

Mr Trump also dispatched his daughter, Ivanka, to the Pennsylvania suburbs on Thursday in the hope that she can lift his standing in the crucial swing state.

Some of his staunchest allies have been unusually critical of him during the most difficult stretch of his campaign.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and presidential candidate in 2012 who wanted to be Mr Trump’s running mate, suggested on Thursday that there were two Donald Trumps.

“There’s a big Trump and a little Trump,” he said in an appearance on the Fox Business Network. “The little Trump is frankly pathetic.”

However, not all of Mr Trump’s supporters are ready to ditch him.

Jerry Falwell Jr, a prominent evangelical Christian leader who is the president of Liberty University in Virginia, said that he did not believe the allegations made against Mr Trump and defended his character.

“That videotape that was released last week, I think there‘s a different Donald Trump now,” Mr Falwell told CNN. “Unlike Hillary, I believe all people are redeemable, and I believe his life has changed.”

At Mr Trump’s rally in West Palm Beach, the candidate‘s most ardent fans stood by him. “I hope it’s not true, but I can‘t look at that right now,” said Karen Hainline (54), of Wellington, Florida. “I have to look at who is going to run our country and make jobs. We’re getting people beheaded in our own country. We need security.”

The New York Times published the story of two women who said that Mr Trump "touched them inappropriately".

‘His hands were everywhere’

Jessica Leeds (74) said that, more than three decades ago when she was a travelling businesswoman, she sat next to Trump in the first-class cabin of a New York-bound flight. The two had never met.

About 45 minutes after takeoff, Mr Trump lifted the armrest, she said, grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. Ms Leeds told the New York Times that "he was like an octopus. His hands were everywhere".

Rachel Crooks told the news organisation that, when she was a 22-year-old receptionist at a real estate investment and development company located in Trump Tower, she introduced herself to Mr Trump when they were in an elevator.

They shook hands, Ms Crooks said, and Mr Trump would not let go. Instead, she said, he began kissing her - on the cheeks and on the mouth. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that,” she said.

Later on Wednesday night, People magazine published a story from one of its own reporters who claimed Mr Trump had forced himself on her.

“He was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat,” wrote Natasha Stoynoff about the 2005 incident, which happened after the leaked audio with Billy Bush was recorded. She said that Trump later insisted: “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?”

The Palm Beach Post published a similar story told by Mindy McGillivray, who said Trump groped her 13 years ago at his Mar-a-Lago estate, in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Guardian reported that Mr Trump deliberately walked in on two young Miss USA 2001 contestants while they were naked and getting dressed for a rehearsal, according to one of the former beauty contestants, who did not wish to be identified.

“Mr Trump just barged right in, didn’t say anything, stood there and stared at us,” one of the women recalled. Mr Trump’s attitude, she said, seemed to be: “I can do this because I can.”

In addition, four women told Buzzfeed that Mr Trump walked into the dressing room during the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant while contestants were changing. Some were only 15 years old.

“I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here’,” Mariah Billado, the former Miss Vermont Teen USA told Buzzfeed. Mr Trump’s alleged response was “Don‘t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.”

Backstage

In 2005, Mr Trump discussed going backstage at beauty pageants on air with the radio shock jock Howard Stern.

In one episode of Stern’s programme he said: “Well, I‘ll tell you the funniest is that before a show, I’ll go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it . . . I sort of get away with things like that.”

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway confirmed to the Guardian on Wednesday night that the Republican nominee was filing a suit against the publication.

Litigation

The New York Times would not be the first outlet to face litigation from Mr Trump. The Republican nominee's wife, Melania, is currently suing the Daily Mail and he has long pledged to "open up" libel laws in the United States. Mr Trump has previously threatened to sue the New York Times in a September tweet.

The Trump campaign sent out a retraction demand to the New York Times early on Thursday from the lawyers Kasowitz, Benson, Torres and Friedman.

“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, a prominent securities lawyer also advises the Republican nominee on Israel policy.

Under American libel law as defined in the 1964 case of New York Times v Sullivan in 1964, 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”.

With polls showing Hillary Clinton pulling ahead in the race for the White House, her campaign jumped on the new allegations in a written statement from spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri.

“This disturbing story sadly fits everything we know about the way Donald Trump has treated women,” Ms Palmieri said. “These reports suggest that he lied on the debate stage and that the disgusting behaviour he bragged about in the tape are more than just words.”

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson said Wednesday that “Trump cannot win this election. It’s time for Republicans, and all Americans, to face that reality. And it’s time to reject the notion that he is the only option other than Hillary Clinton. Americans deserve better. Women deserve better.”

This is far from the first time that Mr Trump has denigrated women during the 2016 campaign. He has called them "disgusting" and "animals", has said a New York Times columnist had "the face of a dog", and spent a week fighting with a former Miss Universe , Alicia Machado, a Latina woman he described as "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping".

New York Times/Guardian Service