Trump’s lawsuit threat against accusers overshadows agenda
All of these liars will be sued once the election is over - Donald Trump
Donald Trump is laying out an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days as president but pointedly noting that he will find time to sue the numerous women who have accused him of groping and other unwanted sexual behaviour.
“All of these liars will be sued once the election is over,” Trump said Saturday during an event near the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg that was meant to be policy-driven. He added: “I look so forward to doing that.”
Asked about Trump’s remarks, Hillary Clinton told reporters between rallies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia that she was done responding to what her Republican opponent is saying as Election Day nears and would instead focus on helping elect other Democrats.
To that end, she attacked Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, saying in Pittsburgh that he has refused to “stand up” to Trump as she praised his Democratic challenger, Katie McGinty. Noting Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants and his attacks on a Muslim-American military family, she said of Toomey: “If he doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Donald Trump after all of this, then can you be sure that he will stand up for you when it counts?”
Toomey spokesman Ted Kwong said Clinton’s comments highlight McGinty’s lack of independence.
“Today is just further proof that hyper-partisan, ethically challenged Katie McGinty will be a rubber stamp for everything Hillary Clinton wants to do in Washington,” he said. “Pat Toomey has been, and will continue to be, an independent leader in the Senate on issues ranging from gun safety to ending Wall Street bailouts.”
Clinton rejected Trump’s allegation, offered without evidence, that the dozen or so women who have come forward are being prompted by her campaign or the Democratic National Committee. The accusers emerged after the former reality TV star boasted of kissing women and groping their genitals without their consent. On Saturday, an adult film actress said the billionaire kissed her and two other women on the lips “without asking for permission” when they met him after a golf tournament in 2006.
Trump has denied that all the other allegations, while insisting some of the women weren’t attractive enough for him to want to pursue. His broadside against the women Saturday 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.
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, familiar themes to supporters who have flocked to his rallies this year.
“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 recap 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.
Throughout the GOP primary, Trump was criticized for shying away from detailed policy proposals. But his 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.
Still, any headway that Trump may have made was likely to be diluted by his legal threats against his accusers, just the latest example of Trump stepping on his intended message at inopportune moments. Days earlier, during the final debate, his otherwise well-received performance was marred by an alarming statement near the end that he might not accept the outcome of the election if he loses.
With the debates over, Trump and Clinton have few apparent opportunities to alter the course the race substantially — a reality that benefits Clinton more than Trump. The Republican is trailing his opponent in polls in most of the battleground states while Clinton eyes potential upset victories in traditionally safe GOP territory, with Arizona at the top of the list.
An increasingly confident Clinton on Saturday made what’s become her closing pitch, stressing unity during events in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and asking her backers to carry her message to any Trump supporters they meet.
“I understand that they need a president who cares about them, will listen to them and I want to be their president,” she