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Donald Trump, Groper-in-Chief?
WASHINGTON: Jessica Leeds wanted to punch the TV screen when she saw Donald Trump insist at the second debate he would never touch or grope a woman without her permission.
WASHINGTON: Jessica Leeds wanted to punch the TV screen when she saw Donald Trump insist at the second debate he would never touch or grope a woman without her permission. He may have bragged about it but had never done that, he claimed.
Now, Leeds and at least six more women have come forward, alleging Trump did just that, forced himself on them on a commercial flight, outside an elevator, his resort in Miami, or just gawked at them as they changed at his beauty pageants. Leeds said Trump touched her breasts and tried to put a hand up her skirt in the first class cabin of a flight — he didn’t have a plane of his own then — over three decades ago.
Rachel Crooks alleged Trump kissed her “directly on the mouth” as they waited for an elevator inside Trump Tower in Manhattan in 2005. Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter, alleged that Trump pushed her up against a wall and started kissing her during an interview at Mar-a-Lago.
Mindy McGillivray alleged Trump groped her behind at a concert at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Miami in 2003. Her account was confirmed by a photographer who was with her. Cassandra Searles, a Miss Washington, wrote in Facebook that Trump, who owned the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants then, “continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room”.
A Miss USA contestant who has chosen to remain anonymous, alleged, “Mr Trump just barged right in, didn’t say anything, stood there and stared at us (while they changed).” Tanya Dixon, another contestant, has said Trump came “waltzing in” when she and others were either naked or undressing. Mariah Billado, a Miss Teen USA contestant, said, “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.”
Trump called Leeds and Crooks’s allegations in The New York Times a “total fabrication”. About Stonyoff’s first-person piece in People magazine, he wrote, “Why didn’t the writer of the twelve year old article in People Magazine mention the ‘incident’ in her story. Because it did not happen!” Trump campaign called the NYT article “fiction”.
The allegations come at a time when Trump is trying to steady his campaign rocked by the release of a 2005 recording in which he boasted about groping women and forcing himself on them. He is behind Hillary Clinton by more than 6 points in polls.
