As if Donald Trump couldn’t look any worse right now after probably one of the worst campaign fortnights in US history, here’s another barnstormer for ya: the New York Times reports that two women have come forward to claim that Trump groped or touched them inappropriately.
More than three decades ago, when she was a traveling businesswoman at a paper company, Ms. Leeds said, she sat beside Mr. Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. They had never met before.About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her.According to Ms. Leeds, Mr. Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.“He was like an octopus,” she said. “His hands were everywhere.”She fled to the back of the plane. “It was an assault,” she said.
Another woman, Rachel Crooks, alleges that in 2005 Trump forced her into a kiss after refusing to release her hand during a handshake. Both women were spurred into sharing their stories based on Trump’s repeated insistence that the things he said in the leaked tapes do not reflect him personally or his actual behaviour.
“None of this ever took place,” said Mr. Trump, who began shouting at The Times reporter who was questioning him. He said that The Times was making up the allegations to hurt him and that he would sue the news organization if it reported them.“You are a disgusting human being,” he told the reporter as she questioned him about the women’s claims.Asked whether he had ever done any of the kissing or groping that he had described on the recording, Mr. Trump was once again insistent: “I don’t do it. I don’t do it. It was locker room talk.”
This is all obviously very bad for the Trump camp. As much as the foaming-at-the-mouth Trump fans think this a specifically unique election in which the fear of bad trade deals and Muslim immigrants will coast Trump to victory, unfortunately being a weird racist sex predator with a bumpy business record and no political knowledge to speak of actually makes you look really fucking bad even against a widely disliked candidate like Hillary Clinton.