Perhaps if DONALD JOHN TRUMP had learned empathy and kindness as a child, people might like him. Currently, is grumpy TRUMP descending into madness, untethered to truth? He lacks a moral compass. He needs a psychiatrist. From The New York Times:
Trump, Trailing Among Women, Lashes Out at His Female Accusers
Mr. Trump’s news conference had little to do with the issues in the 2024 presidential race, and seemed like more of a venting exercise over his frustrations about his legal travails.
If any voters had forgotten that Donald J. Trump was accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, he spent roughly 45 minutes reminding them on Friday, eight weeks before Election Day.
At a lectern in the lobby of Trump Tower, Mr. Trump, flanked by seven of his lawyers, laid out years-old allegations from the women in detail as he denied that they were telling the truth. He had just attended a federal appeals court hearing related to a civil case in which he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming a New York writer, E. Jean Carroll, decades earlier. Mr. Trump was not required to attend the hearing, but decided he wanted to.
When the hearing was over, he went to his eponymous building for what the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign called a “press conference.” But he ended it without taking questions, and the session — during which Mr. Trump criticized his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, for avoiding reporters — was more like a venting exercise over his frustrations about his legal travails.
Mr. Trump — who is badly trailing with women voters in polling — used the time Friday to insult the lawyers working for him, saying he was “disappointed” in them before adding that they’re “talented,” as they stood, mute, in a row next to him. He declared that Ms. Carroll’s claim that a dress she owned may have had Mr. Trump’s DNA on it was inspired by Monica Lewinsky, referring to the White House intern whose life was forever changed after she had a sexual relationship with former President Bill Clinton. He couldn’t remember one of the accuser’s names, and spent time at the lectern searching for it through the rectangular note cards he held.
Of another accuser, Jessica Leeds, who alleged an assault on an airplane, he said, “She said I was making out with her. And then, after 15 minutes — and she changed her story a couple times, maybe it was quicker — then I grabbed her at a certain part and that’s when she had enough.”
He added, “Think of the impracticality of this: I’m famous, I’m in a plane, people are coming into the plane. And I’m looking at a woman, and I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?”
And, for emphasis, he suggested that one of the accusers wasn’t attractive enough for him to have made a move on. “Frankly — I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say — but it couldn’t have happened, it didn’t happen, and she would not have been the chosen one,” he said.
Mr. Trump, who is set next week for what may be his only debate against Ms. Harris, had no staff who were visible nearby. His son Eric stood near the barricades reporters were positioned behind.
It’s rather rare for a presidential nominee accused of sexual misconduct to willingly put it at the forefront of the public consciousness so close to the moment voters will be casting ballots. But Mr. Trump likes to speak to reporters and in front of cameras, and believes he is his own best defender.
Such a belief carries risks for Mr. Trump, who, over the 45 minutes, undoubtedly gave Ms. Harris’s ad team plenty of material to work with.
It is not clear there are many — if any — voters who truly have no opinion of Mr. Trump already, and since he came onto the political scene as a candidate in 2015, events like the one on Friday have tended to fade relatively quickly. As a one-off event, Mr. Trump’s diatribe was already receding from view in headlines by late afternoon. But concerns about his personality and behavior have persisted for some swing voters for years, and his advisers have hoped to minimize them.
Within an hour of Mr. Trump leaving the lectern, the judge in his New York criminal case announced he was delaying the sentencing until after the November election, a decision that relieved the former president’s team.
Mr. Trump’s controversies — and even his legal woes — are so numerous that they have become something of a blur. He’s faced so many of them that one rolls almost effortlessly into the next, with a thin film of negativity hovering in the public’s perception but specifics hard to recall.
One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Will Scharf, pointed to a lack of specifics in some of the accounts from some of the accusers, using terse, lawyerly language to make his point and describe the cases as part of a broader effort against his client.
But Mr. Trump, for whatever reason, lingered on specifics graphically on Friday, recounting what Ms. Carroll had alleged was a rape in a department store dressing room near Trump Tower in the 1990s.
“If I would have walked into Bergdorf Goodman, the department store that she said, everybody would have said, ‘Oh, there’s Trump.’ And it would have been at that time on Page Six,” Mr. Trump said, referring to his favorite New York Post gossip page.
“Page Six was the equivalent of today’s internet, and it would have been a big story if I would have walked into that store, got into a dressing room, and supposedly you-know-what to her. Never happened,” he said.
Mr. Trump, who has for decades routinely sued people, insisted Democrats were using civil lawsuits against him gratuitously. He complained that Democrats should, in fact, be investigated by the Justice Department for their attacks on judges, and bemoaned that Republicans aren’t as good at what is known in sports as working the referee. He appeared to refer specifically to Judge Aileen Cannon, who he appointed to the federal bench, and who dismissed one of the indictments against him.
“They do it with the Supreme Court justices because they think they’re going to intimidate. I think it should be illegal,” he said. “That’s what the D.O.J. should look into, the legality of these people, taking a brilliant judge and demeaning her, and taking other people that are fair and solid and demeaning them. It’s called playing the ref.”
Then he said, “Nobody did it better than the late great Bobby Knight,” referring to the famous basketball coach.
“He would scream at those refs,” Mr. Trump said admiringly, saying that Mr. Knight’s lesson was that he’d win points on the next contested call.
With that, Mr. Trump soon wrapped up. “Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he told reporters. “Thank you very much everybody.”
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman
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