Trump has also lashed out at The New York Times, which this week published the accounts of two women who say Trump sexually assaulted them.
Donald Trump: “But it’s the failing New York Times, and they’re inventing false claims without any evidence, no witnesses, no nothing, enacted, supposedly, years and years ago. I’ve never met these people. I don’t even know who they are. They’re made-up stories, filed right before the election. Right before the election.”
Trump has demanded a retraction and threatened to sue The New York Times over the article. In response, the Times’s lawyers have sent a letter to Trump’s lawyers, writing: “The essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one’s reputation. Trump has bragged about his non-consensual touching of women. … Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself.” The Committee to Protect Journalists has said, “A Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States”—marking the first time the Committee to Protect Journalists has said a U.S. presidential candidate is a threat to press freedom.