Facing scandal, Trump blames global conspiracy
Candidate continues to deny allegations, claims ‘Clinton machine’ behind it all
Donald Trump issued a breathtaking call to arms Thursday as he emphatically denied allegations that he groped and kissed multiple women without their consent, charging that his accusers were part of a global conspiracy to extinguish his outsider movement.
Scrambling to turn around his floundering campaign, Trump declared war on the news media and multinational corporations, alleging that they are colluding with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to orchestrate “the single greatest pile-on in history” and undermine his campaign, which he said was an “existential threat” to the global establishment.
“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure,” the Republican nominee said at a rally in West Palm Beach, Florida. “Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe and morally deformed. They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and your family. … They will lie, lie, lie.”
Trump’s fiery invective came just minutes after first lady Michelle Obama tried to summon the morality of a nation by saying that Trump’s degrading comments about women were an affront to all citizens.
The dueling speeches made for a remarkable moment in a roiling presidential campaign and signaled that the final 25 days would focus not on policy or ideology but on character.
The first lady, exasperated and angry, said video of Trump in 2005 bragging about leveraging his stardom to force himself upon women “has shaken me to my core.” Although careful never to mention Trump by name, Obama sternly admonished him for behavior she called “cruel,” “sick” and devoid of basic human decency.
“This is not politics as usual,” Obama said at a rally for Clinton in Manchester, New Hampshire. “This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to — Democrat, Republican, independent — no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.”
President Barack Obama picked up where his wife left off, denouncing Trump and casting this election as “about affirming democracy.”
Obama also sought to shame Republicans who stood by silently during Trump’s ascent. “You claim the mantle of the party of family values, and this is the guy you nominate? And stand by? And endorse? And campaign with?” he said at an Ohio Democratic Party dinner in Columbus.
In his Florida speech, Trump framed his candidacy in epic, global terms. He said the Nov. 8 election represents “a crossroads in the history of our civilization,” with his populist movement fighting to upend “radical globalization and the disenfranchisement of working people.”
Trump hopes his revolutionary message will galvanize his base of aggrieved working-class whites to vote in historic numbers and help him overcome what polls suggest could be an insurmountable deficit to Clinton with virtually every other demographic group.
Trump’s remarks, which he read from a teleprompter, were laced with the kind of global conspiracies and invective common in the writings of the alternative-right, white-nation- alist activists who see him as their champion. Some critics also heard echoes of historical anti-Semitic slurs in Trump’s allegations that Clinton “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty” and that media and financial elites were part of a soulless cabal out to destroy “our great civilization.”
“It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities,” Trump said.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the AntiDefamation League, tweeted that Trump “should avoid rhetoric and tropes that historically have been used against Jews” and “keep hate out of campaign.”
Trump leveled searing charges against Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. He accused them of engaging in “a massive cover-up of widespread criminal activity at the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.”
“The Clintons are criminals,” Trump said. “Remember that. They’re criminals.”
Trump dismissed the claims of sexual harassment made by several women Wednesday as an “absolute horror show of lies” and labeled his accusers — as well as the journalists who reported their stories — “horrible, horrible liars.” He claimed he could prove that their accusations were false, but he declined to detail his evidence.
Trump also claimed that the women were “put forward” by “the Clinton machine,” although there is no evidence that the Clinton campaign was behind the women going public with their accusations. Two women who told The New York Times that Trump touched them inappropriately said they came forward after watching Trump, in Sunday night’s debate, deny ever taking such actions.
In his Florida speech, Trump lashed out at former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff, who wrote in a first-person account published Wednesday that Trump kissed her without her consent at his Mara-Lago resort in Florida in 2005 when they were alone before an interview with him and his then-pregnant wife, Melania.
“Take a look, you take a look,” Trump urged his supporters. “Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so.”
Clinton, who was in California on Thursday raising money, told donors at a San Francisco event that the accounts about Trump were “disturbing.”
“The whole world has heard Trump brag about how he mistreats women, and the disturbing stories just keep coming,” Clinton said. “But it’s more than just the way he degrades women, as horrible as that is. He has attacked immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, POWs, Muslims and our military, which he’s called a disaster. There’s hardly any part of America that he’s not targeted.”
The abuse allegations have put Trump further on the defensive at a time when he trails Clinton badly in key battleground states and has been abandoned by dozens of elected Republican officials. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Monday he would no longer defend Trump or campaign with him, though he has not withdrawn his endorsement.
Early Thursday, Trump’s campaign released a letter from lawyer Marc Kasowitz demanding a retraction by the Times and threatening a lawsuit. In response, Times general counsel David McCraw sent Kasowitz a letter Thursday defending the newspaper’s reporting. If Trump disagrees, McCraw wrote, “we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”