Ugly fight in US over who treats women worse
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ALREADY deeply divisive, America’s campaign for president is quickly devolving into an ugly fight over who has treated women worse: Donald Trump, whose White House bid is floundering, or former President Bill Clinton, who is not on the ballot.
Trump’s campaign is now signaling it will spend the election’s final month concentrating on the former president’s marital affairs and unproven charges of sexual assault, as well as his wife and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s unverified role in intimidating the women who were involved.
But Trump is a deeply imperfect messenger, given that his attacks on the Clintons’ treatment of women are being overshadowed by a flood of allegations that he groped women without consent.
The New York Times and the Palm Beach Post on Wednesday reported stories about three women who alleged Trump had inappropriately touched them. Separately, a People Magazine reporter wrote a detailed first-person account of being attacked by Trump while interviewing the businessman and his wife, Melania Trump.
Trump took to Twitter yesterday to denounce the Times story as a “total fabrication,” and to assert that the incident cited by People “did not happen.” The stories come less than a week after the publication of a 2005 recording in which the Republican nominee boasted of using his fame to kiss and grab women.
In an interview broadcast yesterday, the soap opera actress in the video said Trump’s comments were offensive. But actress Arianne Zucker, on NBC’s Today, said she wasn’t shocked by it, given “that type of personality.” She said that’s “probably why it doesn’t mean a lot to me.”
The revelation of the video last Friday prompted a flood of Republicans to revoke their support for Trump, with some even calling for him to drop out of the race — though a handful of Republican officials have since switched back to supporting him.
Clinton adviser Jennifer Palmieri said the latest revelations matched “everything we know about the way Donald Trump has treated women.”
Trump’s campaign denied the reports and threatened to sue The New York Times if it did not retract its story.
Taken together, the revelations about Trump and his counter attack about Bill Clinton have plunged a rancorous campaign to new lows.
The real estate mogul has also aggressively charged that Hillary Clinton not only needs to be defeated in November, but also “has got to go to jail.”
His campaign is also facing questions about ties to Russian interests accused of hacking Democratic groups, as well as the hacking of a top Clinton adviser’s e-mails.
For Trump, the cumulative effect of his brazen strategy appears to be a setback in the battleground states he needs to win next month.
Rather than trying to make up ground by shifting attention back to issues that could appeal to new voters, the Republican campaign appears to be moving swiftly to make Bill Clinton’s past a centerpiece of the campaign.
Hillary Clinton, who is on pace to become America’s first female president if her lead holds, has tried to stay above the fray.
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