Trump: ‘All of these liars will be sued when the election is over’
Donald Trump launched another late attempt to fix his sagging campaign Saturday, delivering a speech billed as a closing argument in a hotel ballroom near the battlefield that turned the direction of the Civil War.
Yet, even as Trump praised Abraham Lincoln for uniting the country, Trump laced his Gettysburg speech with familiar charges of a rigged election and corrupt media, along with a new vow to sue 10 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
“All of these liars will be sued when the election is over,” Trump told a small audience at the Eisenhower Hotel.
An adult film star Saturday became the latest woman to step forward and allege that Donald Trump made inappropriate sexual advances toward her.
Jessica Drake, who works for the pornography company Wicked Pictures, said she met Trump 10 years ago while in Lake Tahoe at a golf tournament.
After some flirting during the day, Drake said Trump invited her and two friends to his room at a hotel.
“When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission,” Drake said, with her attorney Gloria Allred at her side.
After 45 minutes of talking to Trump they left his room, she said. But 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’s aides had previewed the speech Saturday as a policy address that would highlight his first hundred days in office. But almost all of the promises had been made before in other speeches and press releases.
They include steep tax reductions, a border wall with Mexico, a constitutional amendment limiting terms for members of Congress and the cancellation of billions of dollars in payments for United Nations climate change programs. He added new details to a recent proposal to impose mandatory minimum criminal sentences for immigrants who return to the U.S. illegally after they have been deported and a promise to freeze most federal government hiring.
Trump had given a similar speech in June, during another low point in his campaign, laying out eight promises for his first 100 days in office. Among them: appointing conservative judges, repealing and replacing President Barack Obama’s health care law; and lifting restrictions on energy production.
Trump has accused the press repeatedly this week of ignoring three recent national polls that show his campaign ahead of Clinton’s — including the Los Angeles Times poll that showed him leading by a fraction of a percentage point as of Saturday. The majority of national polls, along with those from key battleground states, show Trump facing an exceedingly difficult deficit.
A top campaign aide conceded during a call with reporters on Friday night that Clinton was leading, and accused her of running out the clock to avoid a stumble.
Trump has vacillated in recent days between bravado and tentative talk about confronting the possibility of a loss.
In three speeches Friday, he mentioned Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union, known as the Brexit, which defied predictions from many experts.
Trump alternately described his campaign as “beyond Brexit,” “Brexit-plus,” and “Brexit times five.”
Many of his supporters are convinced he will win, agreeing with him that the news media is in cahoots with Clinton to shape coverage and manipulate polls to depress turnout among his voters.
“I hate seeing stuff about the polls,” said Jacqueline Catapano, a 35-year-old nurse who attended a boisterous rally in Newtown, Pa., on Friday. “It’s a tactic from their side to get people to think we’re already defeated.”