WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.: Donald Trump heatedly rejected new allegations of sexual assault as “pure fiction” on Thursday, hammering his female accusers as “horrible, horrible liars” as the already-nasty 2016 presidential campaign sank further into charges and countercharges of attacks on women.
Rival Hillary Clinton was mostly silent on the issue. But Trump faced a passionate rebuke from first lady Michelle Obama, who warned that his behavior “is not something we can ignore.”
After years of working to end “this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect … we’re hearing these exact same things on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it,” Obama declared in battleground New Hampshire, her voice cracking with emotion. “We can’t expose our children to this any longer, not for another minute, let alone for four years.”
With Election Day less than four weeks away, Republican Trump was again forced to defend himself against allegations of sexual misconduct, five days after a video surfaced in which he bragged about kissing and groping women without their permission.
Similar behavior was detailed by women who accused Trump in articles published late Wednesday by the New York Times and the Palm Beach Post. Separately, a People Magazine reporter offered a first-person account accusing Trump of attacking her while she was in Florida to interview him and his pregnant wife.
Ever defiant, the New York billionaire denied the allegations and blamed them on Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the complicit news media as he campaigned in Florida. He promised to sue his media critics and said he was preparing evidence that would discredit his female accusers, whom he called “horrible people. They’re horrible, horrible liars.”
“These vicious claims about me, of inappropriate conduct with women, are totally and absolutely false. And the Clintons know it,” he charged. He offered no evidence discrediting the new reports except to ask why his accusers had waited years and then made their allegations less than a month before the election.
His comments came soon after he called a reporter “a sleazebag” for asking whether Trump had ever touched or groped a woman without her consent. Republican leaders across the country said they were deeply troubled by the allegations against Trump, but there was no evidence of new defections.
More Trump accusers may be coming forward, according to attorney Gloria Allred, who said women have contacted her office in recent days.