Trump denounces ‘lies and smears’ as more women come forward

Two more women came forward Friday to accuse Donald Trump of unwanted sexual touching, including a former contestant from a reality show that starred the Republican presidential nominee.

The latest accounts come after several women reported in recent days that Trump groped or kissed them without their consent.

At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday, Trump sought to discredit his accusers. He said because there were no witnesses to the interactions, the allegations were not credible.

“Right now I am being viciously attacked with lies and smears,” Trump said at an outdoor amphitheater. “It’s a phony deal. I have no idea who these women are.”

Trump also suggested the women who have come forward to accuse him were not physically attractive enough to merit his attention. “Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you,” he said when speaking of one of the women.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” said Trump made unwanted sexual advances toward her at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007, while photographer Kristin Anderson alleged Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York nightclub in the early 1990s.

Zervos, 41, appeared at a news conference Friday with Gloria Allred, a well-known Los Angeles attorney. Zervos was a contestant on “The Apprentice” in 2006 and said she later contacted Trump to inquire about a job with one of his businesses.

Zervos said she had an initial meeting with Trump, where he discussed a potential job with her. When they parted, he kissed her on the lips and asked for her phone number, she said.

She said weeks later Trump called to invite her to meet him at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she said she was expecting to have dinner with the New York billionaire. Instead, she described a series of unwanted kisses and touching by Trump, which she said she repeatedly rejected.

“He tried to kiss me again … and I said, ‘Dude, you’re tripping right now,’ attempting to make it clear I was not interested,” she said.

Zervos said Trump eventually stopped and began talking as if they were in a job interview. She said she was later offered a low-paying job at a Trump-owned golf course.

At the time, Trump had recently married his third and current wife, Melania Trump, and the couple had an infant son.

Zervos said she is a Republican and has no political agenda in coming forward. Allred said her client told her parents and others about the incident shortly after it occurred.

In a statement released by his campaign, Trump denied he was ever alone in a hotel room with Zervos and claimed to have only a vague recollection of meeting her. He lashed out at the media for creating “a theater of absurdity that threatens to tear our democratic process apart and poison the minds of the American public.”

In a story published online Friday, Anderson told The Washington Post that she was sitting on a couch with friends at a New York nightclub in the early 1990s when someone’s hand reached up her skirt and touched her through her underwear.

Anderson, then in her early 20s, said she pushed the hand away, turned around and recognized Trump as the man who had groped her. Then recently divorced, Trump was then a frequent presence in the New York tabloids, and he was regular presence on the Manhattan club scene.

“He was so distinctive looking — with the hair and the eyebrows. I mean, nobody else has those eyebrows,” Anderson, 46, told the newspaper. She said the assault was random and occurred with “zero conversation.”

Anderson did not respond to a phone message from The Associated Press. She told the newspaper said she does not back Trump or Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.

The Post said it contacted Anderson after a friend she had told about the incident recounted it to a reporter. Other friends also told the Post that Anderson recounted the same story to them years ago.

Zervos’ and Anderson’s decisions to speak publicly about her experience follows last week’s disclosure by the Post of a 2005 video in which Trump boasted that his celebrity gave him the ability to grab women “by the p—-. You can do anything.” Trump apologized for those remarks, but also dismissed them as “locker-room talk.”

Also Friday, Melinda McGillivray, 36, of Palm Springs, Florida, told the AP that Trump’s denial in last Sunday’s presidential debate that he had ever groped women prompted her to come forward after years of brushing off an incident from 2003.

She told The Palm Beach Post for a story published on Thursday that while she was backstage at a concert at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, when he grabbed her buttocks.

“I wanted to do this so I can be a role model for my daughter,” McGillivray said. “I wanted to be that courageous woman that she sees every day, but in that moment she saw vulnerability and she saw a scared little girl.”

Polls suggest Trump has fallen further behind Clinton nationally and in most battleground states. Early in-person voting is underway in 20 states, including Ohio, where President Barack Obama railed against Trump a day after first lady Michelle Obama declared in a passionate speech, “Enough is enough.”

The Obamas both seized on Trump’s words, captured in a video released last week, bragging about kissing and groping women without their permission. The 70-year-old billionaire has apologized, but also repeatedly dismissed his comments as “locker room talk.”

“You don’t have to be a husband or a father to know that that kind of language, those kinds of thoughts, those kinds of actions are unacceptable. They’re not right. You just have to be a decent human being,” President Obama charged in Columbus, Ohio.

Even before the mounting allegations, there was evidence that Trump’s troubles were hurting the Republican Party’s ability to raise money.

The Republican National Committee has raised about 25 percent less over the past three months than it did over the same period four years ago, when Mitt Romney was atop the ticket.

The RNC said Friday that it raised $39.4 million last month, compared to $48.4 million in September 2012. It says it has raised $262.3 million since January 2015, about $20 million more than it had by this time in 2012.

Associated Press