Clinton reaching past Trump, as he denies report of assault
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo, Colo., today, to attend a rally.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestured as he arrived to speak at a campaign rally, today, in Ocala, Fla.
PUEBLO, Colo. » Hillary Clinton turned up the heat on Republican candidates who are facing both tight election races and tough decisions on what to do about Donald Trump. She’s now seeking to spread her new momentum to fellow Democrats on November ballots.
The move came on a day that ended with new allegations — piling onto already damaging revelations of Trump’s aggressive sexual comments about women.
Two newspapers reported late Wednesday that Trump’s actions went beyond words. The New York Times published interviews with two women who said they were touched inappropriately by the billionaire without their permission. The Times said Jessica Leeds, 74, of New York, told the newspaper she encountered Trump on an airline flight three decades ago. Leeds said Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
“He was like an octopus,” she told the newspaper. “His hands were everywhere.”
Rachel Crooks, of Ohio, said she met Trump at Trump Tower in 2005. Age 22 at the time, Crooks says Trump kissed her “directly on the mouth” against her will.
Trump denied the accusations, telling the Times, “None of this ever took place.” His campaign spokesman, Jason Miller, called the story “a completely false, coordinated character assassination.”
Separately, The Palm Beach Post in Florida reported Wednesday night that Mindy McGillivray, 36, told the newspaper that Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago estate 13 years ago. Trump’s campaign said her allegation “lacks any merit or veracity.”
And late Wednesday, People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff posted a story about a 2005 incident at Mar-a-Lago where, she wrote, Trump “was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat.” The Trump campaign also said there was “no merit or veracity” to Stoynoff’s story.
The reports came as two GOP senators and two House members who called for Trump to step aside over the weekend climbed back aboard. Their basic case: They’re voting for a Republican next month, and if Trump isn’t leaving then he’s got to be the one.
John Thune of South Dakota, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate told the Rapid City Journal he had “reservations about the way (Trump) has conducted his campaign and himself.” However, he said, “I’m certainly not going to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
Also back on board after calling on Trump to resign: Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Reps. Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Bradley Byrne of Alabama. There still are some three dozen GOP lawmakers who have withdrawn their support or are calling for Trump to step aside.
Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri issued a statement: about the New York Times story, saying it “sadly fits everything we know about the way Donald Trump has treated women.”
But an increasingly confident Clinton made only brief reference to Trump’s comments about women — noting the Republicans’ dismissal of the conversation as “locker room talk” — and did not address the new allegations.
She spent Wednesday trying to float above the fray, warning voters in Colorado and Nevada not to be turned off by the “pure negativity” coming from her opponent.
Clinton’s campaign had signaled she would go even harder on Republicans, but after news of the fresh allegations, Clinton demurred. She continued to make newly prominent and explicit pitches for congressional candidates in tight races, including Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy and Nevada Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto.
Trump kept up his unrelenting denunciations of Clinton at a rally in Florida. It’s not enough for voters to elect him instead of her, he declared, “She has got to go to jail.”
The focus on Republican congressional candidates is the latest sign the Clinton campaign is moving past a narrow focus on winning the White House, and now is aiming to win big — by delivering the Senate to Democrats, making deep cuts into the Republicans’ majority in the House and, possibly, winning states long considered Republican territory.
“If you’ve got friends in Utah or Arizona, make sure they vote, too,” Clinton told a raucous crowd in Pueblo.
“We are competing everywhere. … I think Americans want to turn out in as big a number as possible” to reject Trump’s message, Clinton said.
She had sympathetic words — serious or not — for Trump supporters who have begun to interrupt her events.
As security escorted one man out in Pueblo, Clinton said: “You have to feel a little sorry for them; they’ve had a really bad couple of weeks.”
Clinton’s new swagger and expanded ambitions come as Trump declares he feels unshackled to launch the sort of hard-edged, personal campaign his most ardent supporters love.
In Florida, he highlighted a new batch of hacked emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account, published by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group. He asserted that the emails show ever more clearly that the former secretary of state and her family are corrupt.
“It never ends with these people,” he said.
Clinton aide Glen Caplin said Wednesday that Trump’s campaign needs to explain its “possible ties to foreign espionage.” The campaign has accused Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, of having advance warning about the leak.
Stone has confirmed he had “back-channel communications” with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but he denies knowing about the group’s plans to release the trove of damaging correspondence.
WikiLeaks, which U.S. officials have said has ties to Russian intelligence, released a fourth installment of private correspondence between top Clinton campaign officials on Wednesday.
Podesta says the FBI is investigating Russia’s possible involvement, raising the extraordinary prospect of a link between Russia and the U.S. presidential election. The FBI said anew that it is investigating possible Russian hacking involving U.S. politics but made no comment on Podesta.
Late Wednesday, Podesta was hacked again, this time via his Twitter account. The campaign would not comment on whether the second hack was related to the email breach.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday in Moscow that “hysterics have been whipped up to distract the attention of the American people from the essence of what the hackers released. … They talk about who did it. Is it really that important?”
With polls showing Clinton pulling ahead in the presidential race and Trump digging in, Republican candidates for the House and Senate are tied in knots. If they revoke their support for their party’s nominee, they risk losing his voters and losing their races. If they stand by him, they not only risk turning off moderate Republicans but also being branded for years as aligned with the Republican who sparked a crisis for the party.
As party leaders step away from him, Trump is vowing to win the election his own way.
He is striking particularly hard at House Speaker Paul Ryan, who told Republicans Monday he’ll no longer campaign for Trump.
Trump said in Florida there is a “whole sinister deal going on” that has prevented Ryan and other Republican leaders from fully backing his campaign. “We’re going to figure it out,” he said. “I always figure it out.”
He said, “I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with a lot of these people, that I can tell you, including Ryan. By the way, including Ryan, especially Ryan.”
20 responses to “Clinton reaching past Trump, as he denies report of assault”
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the f.b.i. is in turmoil with career agents, especially those involved with the email investigations, furious with comey’s unilateral decision not to prosecute the female felon.
the orange one is using his candidacy to bring together the disparate factions that obama and the female felon have successfully polarized and politicized into warring camps.
that the female felon revels that gruber voters will accept her without question and calls the republicans who oppose her deplorable is a sign that she will continue polarizing and politicizing class, race and economic wars to keep the people from realizing their american dreams.
More sordidness about the Trump. You deserve him.
You deserve Crooked Hilliary.
Typical wingnut hearsay about how FBI agents are furious. Funny how these stories are always on the Drudge Report and Infowars websites but never in reputable newspapers. Trump and his supporters and the anti-Hillary crowd are looking more pathetic and desperate every day.
Let’s see, she has the entire mainstream media on her side and she’s still whinning?
Why aren’t democrats and the Star Advertiser urging democrats to take a stand on the Clintons? Surely they have done more damage to country that Trump has. The “mishandling of classified material” alone should be enough to remove her from candidacy. Why aren’t democrats and the Star Advertiser urging democrats to ask how Clinton got a pass from a corrupt DoJ and FBI? Why aren’t democrats and the Star Advertiser urging democrats to ask how the Clintons got so wealthy by getting in bed with Wall St. Banks?
Why didn’t you ever finish college? Why did you fabricate disparate careers on two different posts? Why did you make up the story that you are a PhD holder?
Please tell us, everyone wants to know!!!
WOW Did Bill really do this while HiLIARy stood by?…”Are these the Clintons’ secret grandkids? Their father – the man who claims he’s Bill’s love child – says his prostitute mother slept with the former Arkansas governor 13 times and received seven $100 bills every month delivered by a state trooper”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3834438/Are-Clintons-secret-grandkids-father-man-claims-s-Bill-s-love-child-says-prostitute-mother-slept-former-Arkansas-governor-13-times-received-seven-100-bills-month-delivered-state-trooper.html#ixzz4MvKufEJE
I will tell everyone direct from Tim reed of the Washington standard and freedom outpost. headlines: FBI DIRECTOR COMEY TOOK MILLIONS FROM CLINTON FOUNDATION DEFENSE CONTRACTOR. is anyone surprise by the corruption? these concerns focus on millions of dollars Comey accepted from a Clinton foundation defense contractor, Comey’s former membership on a Clinton foundation corporate partner’s board, and his surprising financial relationship with his brother Peter Comey who works at the law firm that does the Clinton foundation taxes. in the report, Comey is noted as receiving 6 million in one year along from Lockheed martin, who is a Clinton foundation donor, and became a donor in the same year Comey receive those funds. lot more to read, but if type in on google Comey receiving funds from Clinton foundation, you will see the sept. 29 article, click on it and read. so as I see it, Comey should not have been on the Clinton case on e-mail scandal’s because of conflict of interest every lawyer knows that, it does not matter if it was legal or illegal the point is corruption at the highest level, that’s why he did not convict Hillary and anyone involved with classified e-mail scandal. ike, that should answer your question of everyone who wants to know.
Consider the sources. Hahaha!
PhD = piled high and…
mm you ike klastri and all the other Clinton lovers go look it up and see the truth that you folks can’t stand it because the truth hurts.
When the truth is coming from a bunker, off the grid, in Waco, and dispensed from people who marry their first cousins, no thanks.
Why don’t you take your own oft offered advice and keep on the subject at hand?
Damage? You mean like when Bill Clinton came into office saddled with George H.W. Bush’s deficit and left with a budget surplus? Clinton was an excellent senator and solid secretary of state. Trump has already damaged the country by colluding with a foreign government and foreigners (fellow rapist Jullian Assange) to undermine the U.S. elections. He’s well on his way to destroying the GOP, too.
Give me a break. Wonder why the Ds and Rs want Trump out. He is showing the world the Corrupt Establishment in DC and they are scared sh$tless.
Educated people know Donald CANNOT run a country, much less a company. If you can read, you know that he gives his staff fits by not staying on plan, not being able to discuss things business-like, and thinking he can win any debate without studying.
It’s not an ideological thing; it’s a thinking style thing. You can’t let a salesman run the company, no matter how good he is at sales and promotion.
Undereducated people who haven’t worked on big projects, who haven’t been on governing boards, who haven’t participated in business meetings, may not understand that. It’s not a 1950’s movie where the hero can just talk tough, shoot the bad guys, and kiss the beautiful girl without asking for permission.
minnesota’s governor mark dayton said the affordable care act is “no longer affordable.”
and the female felon wants to continue bankrupting the american health system with the failed obamacare.
Three decades and some years ago ” things happen inappropriately”, fast forward to the present and it is remembered, it seems, to help sabotage the presidential election. None of the major candidates are running a fair and honest race. We the people are the losers!
Catholic and Evangelical Spring? The just released WikiLeaks emails of Ms Hillary’s top Campaign Staff Ms Jennifer Palmari and John Podesta on destroying the Catholic Church and the Evangelicals because they oppose abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, adultery, etc. makes mince meat out of our Constitution’s 1st Amendment. For certain this emails will be a challenge for Ms Clinton to explain, even if she fires Ms Palmari and Mr. Podesta. A very sticky campaign situation.