Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump: Woes from ‘phony polls’
GOP nominee, seen having a narrow path to presidency, says he’s ‘winning’
ST. AUGUSTINE — 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 Hillary Clinton worked to slam the door on her Republican opponent in New Hampshire while eyeing a possible Democratic majority in the Senate.
With two weeks 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 his Democratic opponent. 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.
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 PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Clinton 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 misconduct.
“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.”
Warren, riffing off Trump’s insult to Clinton in the final debate, warned the businessman that “nasty women are tough, nasty women are smart and nasty women vote.”
Clinton pounded Trump for what she said was his denigrating of U.S. troops assisting Iraqis in their push to retake the city of Mosul.
“He’s basically declaring defeat before the battle has even started,” Clinton said, referring to Trump’s tweet on Sunday calling the new fight against the Islamic State “a total disaster.”
Clinton said her Republican rival is “proving to the world what it means to have an unqualified commander in chief.”
Trump has denied all of the recent allegations of sexual misconduct, 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.”
With Election Day two weeks away, Trump’s electoral map looks bleak.
The Republican National Committee ignored him altogether in mailers to New Hampshire voters set to be distributed later this week, according to material obtained by The Associated Press. The mail focuses instead on Clinton’s credibility, featuring a picture of her and former President Bill Clinton and the words, “No More of The Lying Clintons.”
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway outlined a path to 270 electoral votes on Sunday that banks on victories in Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina along with New Hampshire and Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
Noticeably absent from the list was Pennsylvania, a state that a top adviser privately conceded was slipping away despite Trump’s aggressive courtship of the state’s white working-class voters.
The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal discussions.