ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla.: A defiant Donald Trump blamed his campaign struggles on “phony polls” from the “disgusting” media on Monday, fighting to energize his most loyal supporters as his path to the presidency shrinks.
With just 14 days until the election, the Republican nominee campaigned in battleground Florida as his team conceded publicly as well as privately that crucial Pennsylvania may be slipping away to Democrat Hillary Clinton. That would leave him only a razor-thin pathway to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House on Nov. 8.
Despite continued difficulties with women and minorities, Trump refuses to soften his message in the campaign’s final days to broaden his coalition. Yet he offered an optimistic front in the midst of a three-day tour through Florida as thousands began voting there in person.
“I believe we’re actually winning,” Trump declared during a round table discussion with farmers gathered next to a local pumpkin patch.
A day after suggesting the First Amendment to the Constitution may give journalists too much freedom, he insisted that the media are promoting biased polls to discourage his supporters from voting.
“The media isn’t just against me. They’re against all of you,” Trump told cheering supporters later in St. Augustine. “They’re against what we represent.”
In more bad news for Trump, a new poll shows young voters turning to Clinton now that the race has settled down to two main candidates. Clinton now leads among likely voters 18 to 30 years in age by 60 percent to 19 percent, according to a new GenForward survey.
Young black voters already were solidly in her corner, and now young whites are moving her way, according to the survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
With Trump on the defensive, Democrat Clinton worked to slam the door on his candidacy in swing state New Hampshire.
The former secretary of state campaigned alongside New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is running for the Senate, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was merciless as she seized on recent revelations of Trump’s predatory sexual language and several allegations of sexual assault.
“He thinks that because he has a mouth full of Tic Tacs, he can force himself on any woman within groping distance,” Warren charged. “I’ve got news for you Donald: Women have had it with guys like you.”
Trump has denied all recent allegations, and he addressed a new one Monday in an interview with WGIR radio in New Hampshire.
He called the accusations “total fiction” and lashed out at former adult film performer Jessica Drake, who said Saturday that he had grabbed and kissed her without permission and offered her money to visit his hotel room a decade ago.
“One said, ‘He grabbed me on the arm.’ And she’s a porn star,” Trump said. He added, “Oh, I’m sure she’s never been grabbed before.”
Also Monday, the Associated Press reported that Trump says he received a $17 million insurance payment in 2005 for hurricane damage to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Fla. But the AP has found little evidence of such large-scale damage.
Two years after a series of storms, the real estate tycoon said he didn’t know how much had been spent on repairs, but acknowledged he pocketed some of the money. He transferred funds into his personal accounts, saying that under the terms of his policy “you didn’t have to reinvest it.”
“Landscaping, roofing, walls, painting, leaks, artwork in the — you know, the great tapestries, tiles, Spanish tiles, the beach, the erosion,” he said of the storm damage. “It’s still not what it was.”
But just over two weeks after Hurricane Wilma, Trump hosted 370 guests at Mar-a-Lago for the wedding of his son Donald Jr. Wedding photographs by Getty Images showed the house, pools, cabanas and landscaping seemingly in good repair.
Palm Beach building department records showed no permits for construction on that scale after the storms.
The $17 million Mar-a-Lago insurance payment surfaced during a 2007 deposition in Trump’s unsuccessful libel lawsuit against journalist Tim O’Brien, who Trump accused of underestimating his wealth. As part of the case, O’Brien’s attorneys were permitted to review Trump’s financial records, including some from Mar-a-Lago.