It has been less than a week since a 2005 video of Donald Trump caught on a hot mic saying, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful (women) — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” Now there are five women making allegations that Trump sexually assaulted them.
The New York Times reported on two women who say Trump assaulted them, one more than three decades ago and another more recently, in 2005. Jessica Leeds, 74, alleges that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt during a flight in the 1970s.
“He was like an octopus,” she said. “His hands were everywhere.”
Leeds then moved to the back of the plane.
“It was an assault,” she said.
Rachel Crooks, a receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan, said she was assaulted outside an elevator in the building one morning in 2005.
She shook hands with Trump, but he allegedly would not let go. Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he “kissed me directly on the mouth.”
“It is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable 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,” said Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman.
Trump’s lawyer says the Times article is “nothing more than a politically motivated effort to defeat Mr. Trump’s candidacy.” Lawyer Marc E. Kasowitz sent a letter to the Times demanding the newspaper retract the story, saying the article is “reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel.”
A third woman, Mindy McGillivray, says Trump groped her rear end at his Mar-a-Lago resort 13 years ago, the Palm Beach Post reported.
McGillivray, 36, said she was groped by Trump at Mar-a-Lago 13 years ago. She said she never reported it to authorities.
But her companion that day, photographer Ken Davidoff, vividly remembers when McGillivray pulled him aside moments after the alleged incident and told him, ‘’Donald just grabbed my ass!’’
The fourth woman, then a reporter for People magazine, claims Trump kissed her without her consent in 2005 at Mar-a-Lago. Right before an interview with Trump and his wife Melania, Natasha Stoynoff said the Republican presidential candidate forced himself on her.
“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us,” Stoynoff wrote. “I turned around, and within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat.”
“Now, I’m a tall, strapping girl who grew up wrestling two giant brothers,” she wrote. “I even once sparred with Mike Tyson. It takes a lot to push me. But Trump is much bigger — a looming figure — and he was fast, taking me by surprise, and throwing me off balance.”
“I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself.”
A Trump spokeswoman told People that the writer’s story was “fabricated.” A.J. Delgado, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said he did not find the People writer’s story or other women’s reports of groping “credible.”
The fifth woman, said Trump groped her and invited her to his hotel room. Cassandra Searles, who was Miss Washington 2013, wrote a Facebook post about her time on the Miss USA pageant, where she calls Trump a “misogynist” who “treated us like cattle.”
The Facebook post says:
“Do y’all remember that one time we had to do our onstage introductions, but this one guy treated us like cattle and made us do it again because we didn’t look him in the eyes? Do you also remember when he then proceeded to have us lined up so he could get a closer look at his property? Oh I forgot to mention that guy will be in the running to become the next President of the United States. I love the idea of having a misogynist as the President. #HeWillProbablySueMe #iHaveWorseStoriesSoComeAtMeBro #Drumpf.”
Trump owned the Miss USA pageant from 2002 to 2015.
In a statement issued by his campaign after the Times report was published, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said, “This entire article is fiction.” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Palm Beach Post “there is no truth” to the third allegation. His campaign denied the fourth allegation by the former People reporter. The campaign hasn’t responded to the fifth allegation as of yet.
At Sunday’s debate, Trump was asked by a moderator whether he had ever behaved in such a way.
“No, I have not,” he responded.
Trump dismissed his “grab ’em by the pussy” comments as “locker room talk,” but not actual sexual aggression.
There is also an Entertainment Tonight clip from 1992 of a then 46-year-old Trump making creepy statements about a young girl. In the previously unaired video, Trump is heard asking one girl if she was “going up the escalator.” After she replies, “yeah,” Trump says, “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”
There are only 25 days until the 2016 presidential election.