Trump vows to sue his accusers
Mogul veers off policy ideas to dispute assault claims
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Steering his campaign toward controversy yet again, Donald Trump vowed Saturday to sue every woman who has accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior. He called them “liars” whose allegations he blamed Democrats for orchestrating.
Trump’s blunt threat of legal action eclipsed his planned focus on seriousminded policy during a speech in Gettysburg. Though his campaign had billed the speech as a chance for Trump to lay out a to-do list for his first 100 days as president, he seemed unable to restrain himself from relitigating grievances with Hillary Clinton, the media and especially the women who have come forward in recent days.
“All of these liars will be sued once the election is over,” Trump said.
About a dozen women have publicly accused Trump of unwanted advances or sexual assault in the weeks since a 2005 recording emerged in which the former reality TV star boasted of kissing and groping women without their consent. The latest came Saturday, when an adult film actress said he kissed her and two other women on the lips “without asking for permission” when they met him after a golf tournament in 2006.
Actress Jessica Drake, appearing with attorney Gloria Allred at a news conference Saturday, said Trump or a “male speaking on his behalf” called later and offered her $10,000 and use of his private jet for sex. Drake said she declined.
Trump has denied all the allegations.
“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” he said. Without offering evidence, he surmised that Clinton or the Democratic National Committee had put the women up to it.
Clinton’s campaign said it was a troubling insight into a potential Trump presidency. Clinton spokeswoman Christina Reynolds called the speech “rambling” and “unfocused.”
Trump’s broadside against the women came at the start of an otherwise substantive speech that sought to weave the many policy ideas he has put forward into a single, cohesive agenda that he said he would pursue aggressively during his first three months in office.
The Republican nominee vowed to lift restrictions on domestic energy production, label China as a currency manipulator and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“This is my pledge to you, and if we follow these steps, we will once again have a government of, by and for the people,” Trump said, invoking a phrase from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Though mostly a rehash of policies he’s proposed before, Trump’s speech included a few new elements, such as a freeze on hiring new federal workers and a two-year mandatory minimum sentence for immigrants who re-enter the U.S. illegally after being deported a first time. In a pledge sure to raise eyebrows on Wall Street, he said he’d block a potential merger between AT&T and media conglomerate Time Warner.
Trump’s speech, which aides said would form the core of his closing argument to voters, underscored how the billionaire has gradually compiled a broad — if sometimes vague — policy portfolio that straddles conservative, isolationist and populist orthodoxies.
Yet, any headway that Trump may have made was likely to be diluted by his legal threats against his accusers.
Trump didn’t say what kind of lawsuits he planned to file against the women, but any libel litigation could be complicated by the fact that Trump, in the 2005 recording, bragged about the same kind of conduct the women now accuse him of perpetrating. Trump recently vowed to sue The New York Times for libel but has yet to do so.
With the debates now over, Trump and Clinton have few apparent opportunities to alter the course of the race substantially — a reality that benefits Clinton more than Trump. The Republican is trailing his opponent in most of the battleground states while Clinton eyes potential victories in states such as Arizona and Utah that are traditionally safe GOP territory.
More than 4.4 million votes have already been cast. Data compiled by The Associated Press found that Clinton appeared to be displaying strength in crucial North Carolina and Florida, while Trump appeared to be holding ground in Ohio, Iowa and Georgia.