begin quote from:
Trump fights for survival amid allegations of sexual misconduct
CNN | - |
(CNN)
Donald Trump issued an apocalyptic call-to-arms to his supporters
Thursday as he battled for political survival amid mounting allegations
of sexual misconduct.
Trump fights for survival amid allegations of sexual misconduct
Story highlights
- Donald Trump called new allegations of sexual misconduct 'totally and absolutely false'
- Trump told supporters the media, Clinton campaign and political establishment are aligned
(CNN)Donald Trump issued an apocalyptic call-to-arms to his supporters Thursday as he battled for political survival amid mounting allegations of sexual misconduct.
Trump
accused the press, the political establishment, international banks,
the Justice Department and Hillary Clinton's campaign of conspiring
against the American electorate.
"The
corrupt establishment knows that we are a great threat to their
criminal enterprise," the Republican presidential nominee told
supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida. "This is a struggle for the
survival of our nation, believe me. And this will be our last chance to
save it."
The billionaire savaged his accusers, saying their claims are "totally and absolutely false."
"These
claims are all fabricated. They are pure fiction, and they're outright
lies. These events never, ever happened," Trump said.
Trump's
insistence that the women raising new allegations are wrong contrasts
with the spotlight he put on Bill Clinton's accusers before Sunday's
debate, insisting their stories should be heard. And the sense of
paranoia that rang through Trump's remarks -- scattershot, bitterly
personal, and devoid of policy talk -- is the type of language that long
worried Republicans.
Trump's
remarks stood in stark contrast to the scathing attack first lady
Michelle Obama delivered minutes earlier, saying Trump's words had left
her "shaken."
"It's frightening," she said. "And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts."
Trump's campaign rocked
Trump
has been rocked in recent days by reports on his treatment of women.
The Washington Post on Friday released a 2005 hot mic conversation for
"Access Hollywood" in which Trump was recorded boasting about how his
celebrity gave him license to grope women.
During Sunday night's
debate, Trump apologized for his comments but dismissed the remarks as
"locker room talk" and insisted he never actually did such things.
However, on Wednesday, The New York Times published the account of two
women who described unwanted sexual advances by Trump. It was followed
by a third account published in People Magazine.
CNN
has not yet independently confirmed either The New York Times or People
Magazine accounts. The Trump campaign described the entire Times
article as a "fiction" that amounted to "character assassination." The
Trump campaign told People magazine: "This never happened. There is no
merit or veracity to this fabricated story."
In
West Palm Beach, Trump threatened legal action against The New York
Times, saying the newspaper's reports about his conduct with women "will
be part of the lawsuit we are preparing against them."
"We
already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies, and it will be
made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time," Trump
said, without detailing when that time would come. Trump has previously
also promised to release his tax returns but has yet to do so.
David McCraw, the Times' general counsel, told Trump's lawyer Thursday it will not retract its story.
"The
essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one's
reputation," McCraw wrote. "Mr. Trump has bragged about his
non-consensual sexual touching of women. He has bragged about intruding
on beauty pageant contestants in their dressing rooms. He acquiesced to a
radio host's request to discuss Mr. Trump's own daughter as a 'piece of
ass.' Multiple women not mentioned in our article have publicly come
forward to report on Mr. Trump's unwanted advances. 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."
Trump
also attacked the People Magazine writer who accused him of making an
unwanted advance, telling his supporters: "Look at her. Look at her
words. You tell me. I don't think so."
Trump
cast himself as a messiah-like figure backed by a committed movement,
and willing to suffer to defeat "these horrible people."
"I
never knew it would be this vile, this bad, this viscous. Nevertheless,
I take all of these slings and arrows gladly for you," Trump said.
Michelle Obama's personal speech
Obama,
who is becoming one of Clinton's most effective surrogates, spoke in
deeply personal terms as she criticized Trump at a rally in Manchester,
New Hampshire. She said his alleged behavior is an affront to "basic
human decency."
"I can't stop
thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way I could not
have predicted," Obama said. "This is a time for all of us to stand up
and say, 'Enough is enough. This has got to stop right now.'"
She also rejected Trump's insistence that the 2005 video was "locker room talk."
"To
dismiss this as everyday locker room talk is an insult to decent men
everywhere," she said. "This is not how adults behave. This is not how
decent human beings behave."
She
cast Trump as a poor role model for boys and said that strong men
"don't need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful."
Speaking
at a field office in San Francisco, Clinton said Obama's speech "not
only made a compelling and strong case about the stakes in the election,
but about who we are as Americans."
"We
already know who Donald Trump is," Clinton said. "What we have to prove
in this election is who we are and what we stand for."
Defiance
But
in West Palm Beach, the theme at Trump's rally was defiance. Shortly
before Trump spoke, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani embarked on
a prolonged tirade against the media, singling out the Times in
particular.
Without directly
mentioning the stories about Trump's treatment of women, Giuliani
complained about stories based on the claims that he said had "no
support and no evidence."
He
charged that reporters are liars and slammed the "unbelievable,
unrelenting and awful way in which the press treats our candidate."
"They don't like Republicans they don't like conservatives," Giuliani said.
Former
Florida lieutenant governor Jennifer Carroll told the crowd that
Clinton had chosen to go on a "bully attack" by launching a "gutter
campaign," prompting the crowd to break out in chants of "Lock her up,
Lock her up."
"I
know that God has used sinners to do his great works. All 12 disciples
were sinners," Carroll said, accusing Democrats of being "spineless."
"Why
are they spineless? Because they want to take on a soft target, but
Donald Trump is going to fight back and fight back hard."
In
the crowd, Trump's supporters rejected the new allegations of sexual
misconduct by Trump -- saying the Clintons deserve more scrutiny.
"Remember
when Bill Clinton had his peccadillos? 'Oh his personal stuff doesn't
count, only what he's going to do as president.' Well that should apply
to everybody then," said Barbara Susco, a 77-year-old semi-retired
realtor from Lake Worth, Florida.
She suggested -- without evidence -- that women who involved in the new allegations came forward for money.
"How much were they paid? Things happen, you know, in the world of entertainment. Things go on all the time," Susco said.
Wendy MacArthur, a 61-year-old retiree from Port St. Lucie, Florida, also rejected the veracity of the allegations.
"Well,
isn't it strange that all of the sudden they come out three weeks
before the election when they've had 20 years with racism and sexism and
sexual assault or whatever they were charging him with," she said. "I
just think the timing is very strange and it doesn't hold any
credibility whatsoever."
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