GROPING REPORTS: DON THREATENS TO SUE DAILY

Groping reports: Don threatens to sue daily

Several women have come forward over the past 24 hours to accuse Donald Trump of pawing or groping them over the years, even as new polls show Hillary Clinton surging to a 15-point lead among women -enough to sink him at the polls.

The Trump campaign and its conservative support base, including the right wing media, has trashed the charges, dismissing them as “fabrications“ by the liberal media, but coming on the heels of Trump's own bragging of assaulting women, the allegations are seen as credible.

“He was like an octopus, his hands were everywhere,“ Jessica Leeds, one of the women who claimed to be at the wrong end of Trump's attention told the New York Times. Now 74, Leeds said Trump began pawing her on a flight in 1980 and described how she bolted from the first class cabin to the back of the plane to escape him.

Leeds, and Rachel Crooks, another woman who related a similar experience to NYT when she was a 22-year old receptionist in a realty firm, said they did not make a hue and cry about it as such behaviour was considered normal in that era, but they told family and friends about it immediately . Even as the NYT story was splashing through social media, more women including a journalist -came forward with similar charges, shaking the Trump campaign to its foundation. Meanwhile, another videotape surfaced of a Trump interview in 1992 in which he is heard boasting that he is going to be dating a girl who was only about 10 then in another decade.

At the time Trump was in his mid-40s and had been divorced from his first wife, Ivana, and was dating Marla Maples, who was to become his second wife. The footage shows Trump asking a young girl: “Are you going up the escalator?“ while both are out of view. “Yeah,“ she replies.Trump then boasts: “I'm going to be dating her in 10 years, can you believe it?“ The Trump campaign's response to the stories is predictable -it is all a liberal media conspiracy to destroy him.

Trump himself threatened NYT with a lawsuit while denying its story to a reporter who called him for his version, and telling her “you are a disgusting human being“, when she questioned him. His spokeswoman Katrina Piersen said the women had come forward with the charges because they wanted their “15 minutes of fame“, although one of the accusers is now 74.

Trump's legal team later sent a letter to NYT calling the article “reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se“ and charged that from the “timing of the article, that this is nothing more than a politically-motivated attempt to defeat Trump's candidacy .“

“To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Trump trvialises sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election,“ Trump's communication advisor Jason Miller said in a statement, adding, “It is absurd to think that one of the most recognisable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged in this story , and for this to only become public decades later in the final month of a campaign for president should say it all.“

Trump's candidacy is already in doldrums even without the latest flap, with a section of the Republican Party virtually jettisoning him after disclosure of tapes in which he boasts of his lewd conduct amounting to sexual assault (which he claims was just locker room talk).

Polls following the disclosure show Trump increasingly falling behind Hillary Clinton with both men and women, including those with limited college education who form the core of his support, starting to abandon him.

Trump is already talking about voter fraud and a “stolen election,“ apparently to prepare grounds for his supporters to revolt if he loses. The Republican candidate could still win -if only men voted.

According to a new analysis by Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, Hillary Clinton trails Trump by an average of 5 points among men, enough to get him 350 electoral votes to Hillary's 188. But Clinton leads Trump by 15 points among women -enough to rout him 458-80 if only women voted.

Even with both voting, Clinton is now comfortably ahead, with Silver putting her chances of moving into the White House at over 80%.

 (Toi)