Message #172578

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

The conspiracy to rig the election against Trump just got bigger

By GREG SARGENT | 3:18PM EDT - Tuesday, October 18, 2016


Donald and Melania Trump. — Photograph: Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters.

ON CNN LAST NIGHT, Melania Trump dismissed allegations that her husband made unwanted advances on numerous women as “lies” that were “organized” by “the opposition”.

“I know he respects women,” Melania said. “But he's defending himself because they're lies.” Melania also insisted that “this was all organized from the opposition,” and argued that the infamous Access Hollywood sex tape was the result of Trump getting “egged on” by “boy talk”.

Putting aside how disconcerting it is that Trump was 59 years old when he got drawn into this “boy talk”, Melania's suggestion that the “opposition” organized the parade of female accusers just took a big hit.

People Magazine has now produced five additional people who say that one of Trump's most visible accusers told them of Trump's advance at the time. The accuser, Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People, has claimed that in 2005, Trump pushed her against a wall and tried to kiss her. Trump denies this happened.

But People's account today lists five people who say she told them this story at around the time it allegedly happened. One is a friend of hers who says Stoynoff called her the day after the advance and gave her a full accounting of it. Another is a former journalism professor of hers who says she called him the very night of the advance. Three others were co-workers of hers who say she confided in them.

Politico reports that a full account from these confidantes will run in People Magazine tomorrow. Theoretically, this should complicate the Trump campaign's ongoing push-back.

Trump has claimed the charges of unwanted groping and kissing are part of a plot in which his female accusers have made up stories about him, providing fodder for the Clinton campaign and the news media to conspire to rig the election against him.

But People's latest story points to a problem with this argument. As I noted yesterday, if there is such a plot, it would have to involve more than just his accusers, the Clinton campaign, and the news media. It would also have to involve the people who say that his accusers told them of the advances at the time or more recently, and have now said as much to news outlets.

In other words, either Trump's accusers told their friends, co-workers, and relatives these false stories, in some cases years ago, perhaps in order to derail a Trump presidential run many years in the future, or these confidantes have all recently been enlisted in the plot against Trump, and thus are all falsely claiming to have been told these tales.

Indeed, taking into account this new People magazine story, around 10 confidantes now fall into this category. There are the five reported on by People. On top of that, there is the friend of another accuser who told The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty she was told of Trump's advance soon after it happened in the early 1990s. And then there are four friends of still another accuser (who has claimed Trump felt her up on an airplane three decades ago) who all told The New York Times that she confided in them with this story in the last year.

These confidants have a special place in our chart of the vast international conspiracy to stop Trump, down there on the left, where it says “friends of accusers enlisted in plot”:



And the conspiracy continues to grow.

• Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog at The Washington Post, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant — what you might call “opinionated reporting” from the left.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/10/18/the-conspiracy-to-rig-the-election-against-trump-just-got-bigger