Even When Defending His Behavior Toward Women, Trump Insults One

Donald Trump slammed the latest allegations he's facing as "pure fiction" and "outright lies" in a 45-minute speech that also took aim at national news organizations, the current government and political establishment, and the Clintons. "The claims are preposterous, ludicrous, and defy truth, common sense, and logic," he said. "We already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies, and it will be made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time, very soon." But even when defending his behavior toward women, the GOP nominee couldn't help but focus in on appearances. He appeared to try to undermine a People writer's story of unwanted advances by suggesting she wasn't attractive enough to merit his attention. "I mean, look at her, look at her words," he said. "I don't think so."

Update October 12, 2016: Stories continue to pour out about Donald Trump's sexual misconduct following the leak of a backstage tape from Access Hollywood and his claim that he had never assaulted a woman. A pair of women spoke to The New York Times earlier today, and another group of women told BuzzFeed that Trump entered the dressing area at the Miss Teen USA pageant in 1997, when they were teenagers. That was earlier Wednesday. Later the same evening, four additional reports arose that Trump had harassed or made inappropriate comments around women.

Mindy McGillivray says that Trump touched her inappropriately at an event 13 years ago at Trump property Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach Post reports. McGillivray, now 36, was assisting her friend at a photography assignment during a Ray Charles concert. “All of a sudden I felt a grab, a little nudge. I think it’s Ken [Davidoff, her friend]’s camera bag, that was my first instinct. I turn around and there’s Donald. He sort of looked away quickly. I quickly turned back, facing Ray Charles, and I’m stunned,’" McGillivray tells the Post. She told Davidoff about the incident but didn't raise a fuss. She encountered Trump again, years later, but alleges that Melania arrived before anything untoward took place. Former Miss Teen USA winner Kamie Crawford levelled another allegation of Trump's misconduct at one of his pageants. She says that she was told that Trump "doesn't like Black people." Things only got worse from there. She said that her allegations were only the beginning of her stories about him.

People writer Natasha Stoynoff recalled an incident in which she was attacked by Trump while on assignment at Mar-a-Lago. She says that Trump was showing her around the estate when he pushed her against the wall and aggressively kissed her until the butler entered. More disturbing, perhaps, than the candidate's sexual assault of a reporter, was his conduct just before the interview Stoynoff was slated to conduct with Trump and wife Melania about their happy marriage. "'You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?' he declared, in the same confident tone he uses when he says he’s going to make America great again. 'Have you ever been to Peter Luger’s for steaks? I’ll take you. We’re going to have an affair, I’m telling you.' He also referenced the infamous cover of the New York Post during his affair with Marla Maples. 'You remember,' he said. 'Best Sex I Ever Had.'" Trump then reverted to "doting husband mode, as if nothing had happened," when his wife returned. The harassment continued as Trump scheduled a massage for her the next morning. When Stoynoff arrived, late, she was told that Trump himself had been waiting in the massage room for her but left after 15 minutes. (Read the rest of her account here.) A fourth report emerged of Trump making a questionable remark around 10-year-old girls. Trump was at an event at Trump Tower in 1992 during a segment filmed by Entertainment Tonight. He was 46 years old when the piece was filmed. "You going up the escalator?" Trump asks the child, before saying, "I'm going to be dating her in ten years, can you believe it?" A joke, surely, but not one made in good taste.

Both campaigns made statements about the allegations. “This entire article is fiction, and for The New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous," Trump Senior Communications Advisor Jason Miller said in a statement. "To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election." Their statement comes hours after Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon reaffirmed the campaign's commitment to re-exploring decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct against Bill Clinton. Hillary For America Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri said that she was surprised by neither Trump's behavior nor his mendacity. “This disturbing story sadly fits everything we know about the way Donald Trump has treated women. These reports suggest that he lied on the debate stage and that the disgusting behavior he bragged about in the tape are more than just words.”

Donald Trump's record with respecting women keeps getting worse and worse. A pair of reports emerging Wednesday expose his second-debate claim that he's never groped women as very possibly a lie. One report alleges that Trump kissed or groped women without consent. A second alleges that Trump entered a dressing room at the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant while the contestants were changing clothes.

“I have not," Trump said in response to moderator Anderson Cooper's questioning. “I have great respect for women." Jessica Leeds found that claim ridiculous, according to a new report in The New York Times. "More than three decades ago, when she was a traveling businesswoman at a paper company, Ms. Leeds said, she sat beside Mr. Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York," The Times writes. "They had never met before. About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her." The more recent allegation belongs to Jessica Crooks, who says Trump forcibly kissed her without consent during a 2005 encounter when she was just 22. That would place the encounter around the same time that the Access Hollywood tape was recorded. "They shook hands, but Mr. Trump would not let go, she said," The Times writes. "Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he 'kissed me directly on the mouth.'" Trump denied the allegations and threatened to sue the newspaper when asked for comment. The other report, this one in BuzzFeed, features four contestants at the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant accusing Trump of intentionally entering the room in which they were changing. "I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’” Mariah Billado, former Miss Vermont Teen USA, tells BuzzFeed. Eleven women deny the claim advanced by Billado and the three anonymous contestants, but BuzzFeed allows that they may not have been aware of Trump's entry because of the way that the room works. Billado recalls that Ivanka Trump, who was co-hosting the pageant at 15, told the young women that her father did similar things often. Trump has bragged about entering changing rooms at the pageants he owned repeatedly. He made the claim last year, for example, on the Howard Stern Show. Bridget Sullivan, a former pageant contestant, told BuzzFeed News last spring that Trump walked into their dressing rooms. The Trump campaign denies the claim, but it's unclear how much water their story holds since Trump himself, as we previously wrote, bragged about it on-air.