Trump, in Florida, calls female accusers ‘horrible liars’

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Rocked by allegations of sexual assault, Donald Trump on Thursday lashed out at his female accusers as “horrible, horrible liars” as the deeply divisive presidential campaign sank further into charges and countercharges of predatory treatment of women.

The Republican businessman devoted much of his talk in West Palm Beach to defending himself against multiple reports of inappropriate sexual behavior – accusations that he blamed on Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the news media.

“These vicious claims about me, of inappropriate conduct with women, are totally and absolutely false. And the Clintons know it,” Trump declared. His accusers, he said, “are horrible people. They’re horrible, horrible liars.”

The comments came minutes after he called a reporter “a sleazebag” for asking whether Trump had ever touched or groped a woman without her consent.

First lady Michelle Obama, meanwhile, offered an emotional counterargument in battleground New Hampshire, warning that Trump’s behavior sends a dangerous message to the nation’s children.

“The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman, it is cruel, it is frightening, and the truth is it hurts,” Obama said. She added, “We can’t expose our children to this any longer, not for another minute, let alone for four years.”

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 said the claims “are all fabricated.”

“They’re pure fiction, and they’re outright lies. These events never happened,” he said at the West Palm Beach rally.

He added, “I will not allow the Clinton machine to turn our campaign into a discussion of their slanders and lies.”

The crowd in West Palm Beach lent full-throated support to Trump.

“What he said in public is a hundred times less than what [Clinton] did in public,” said Joe Guido, one of several thousand in attendance at the rally.

Some lined up as early as 4 a.m., eight hours before the scheduled start time and nine hours before Trump actually took the stage. Many came ready with signs and Trump-themed gear.

Many of Trump’s backers remain unmoved by the allegations, saying they’re behind Trump until the end.

“I have never had any problems thinking he wouldn’t make it to the end, and i still feel that way, even through everything they put up against him,” Trump supporter Helen Holmberg said. “He’s still going strong and I think if he has that confidence, we need to have that confidence in him.”

Trump’s campaign signaled Thursday that it would spend the election’s final month relitigating Bill Clinton’s marital affairs and unproven charges of sexual assault, as well as what Trump says is Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s role in intimidating the women who were involved.

The developments 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 without their consent.

In an interview broadcast Thursday, 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, given “that type of personality.”