Final week, a self-described “Dem strategist” posted on X: “I’ve been instructed that Trump groped a minor at considered one of his donor dinners — and that there’s video.” The following day, Stacey Williams, a lady who briefly dated Jeffrey Epstein, went on CNN and accused former president Donald Trump of groping her at Trump Tower in entrance of Epstein in 1993. (CNN talked to 3 folks with whom Williams mentioned the alleged assault, and NBC News spoke with seven.) Additionally that day, the Each day Mail revealed an nameless account of a lady who mentioned second gentleman Doug Emhoff “slapped” her in 2012, backing up an earlier report of the allegations that have been instructed secondhand. In a press release, the Trump marketing campaign denied the allegation concerning Epstein, calling it a “faux story [that] was contrived by the Harris marketing campaign” however didn’t reply to the social media swirl across the strategist’s message, maybe as a result of there was no accuser and no clear allegation. And whereas the Harris marketing campaign had initially denied the story about Emhoff’s ex, telling Semafor, “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a lady is fake,” they declined to debate the brand new firsthand allegations.
It’s the top of October throughout a presidential election, and each camps are lobbing should-be surprises at one another. In contrast to the plain grenades of earlier cycles, such because the gut-dropping footage of Trump describing what he believes to be his proper to “grab them by the pu–y” and the following recoiling of the Republican Get together, these new allegations appear to be much less shocking due to the context by which they exist.
Girls alleging undesirable sexual contact from Trump is so depressingly widespread that the general public appears inured to new info, like discovering out yet one more ice sheet is melting throughout yet one more once-in-a-100-years hurricane season. Trump’s accusers vary from his deceased ex-wife, Ivana, who throughout a 1991 deposition accused Trump of rape (which she recanted) and who’s now interred at considered one of his golf programs, to E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $83.3 million in two sexual abuse and defamation instances, after a jury present in her favor and a decide dominated that her declare Trump had “raped” her was “considerably true.”
Williams, a retired mannequin, alleges that Trump and Epstein smiled at one another whereas Trump’s “palms began transferring, they usually have been on the aspect of my breasts, on my hips, again right down to my butt.” (Epstein died by suicide in jail, whereas awaiting trial for fees of intercourse trafficking minors.) Williams’s account has related parts to these from the earlier 26 women who accused Trump of sexual impropriety: abrupt incursions into intimate bodily areas he apparently feels entitled to enter. (Trump has denied all of the accusations.) It’s unimaginable to disregard the misogynistic, dehumanizing language Trump makes use of when he describes ladies: horseface, monster, dog, disgusting. (The marketing campaign has had barely extra restraint than its surrogates concerning one vulgar time period. Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC revealed then deleted a put up referring to Kamala Harris as a C-word. Earlier than Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Sq. Backyard, a staffer reportedly excised a joke by which comic Tony Hinchcliffe was going to name Harris a “c-nt,” although not one by which Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”)
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Seashore, Florida, 1997.by Davidoff Studios/Getty Pictures.
The brand new rumors about Trump “groping a minor” haven’t been substantiated. Keith Edwards, the one that posted concerning the alleged video, didn’t reply to Vainness Honest’s request for remark, leaving many questions unanswered. How outdated was the alleged minor? What donor was internet hosting the occasion the place the groping supposedly passed off? Throughout which election cycle did it occur? Who took the video and why haven’t they shared it publicly? How does Edwards learn about it? Because the Trump marketing campaign identified, Edwards obtained a one-time $1,000 fee for social media work from the Democratic marketing campaign in April of this yr, in accordance with an FEC filing. (The Harris marketing campaign declined to remark.)
Related allegations have been leveled at Trump prior to now. 5 Miss Teen USA contestants instructed Buzzfeed that Trump walked right into a dressing room whereas youngsters have been altering, and a Miss USA contestant instructed The New York Times he kissed her on the lips with out consent when she was 21. However there’s additionally the so-called “pee tape”—an alleged incident within the Steele file by which Russian intelligence brokers supposedly took footage of Trump watching intercourse employees urinate on one another on the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. The tape never materialized.
