Two more women came forward on Friday to accuse Donald Trump of unwanted sexual touching, including a former contestant from a reality show that the Republican US presidential candidate starred in.
The latest accounts come after several women in recent days reported that Trump groped or kissed them without their consent.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday, Trump sought to discredit his accusers. He said because there were no witnesses to the interactions and that the allegations were not credible.
Photo: Reuters
“Right now I am being viciously attacked with lies and smears,” Trump said at an outdoor amphitheater. “It’s a phony deal. I have no idea who these women are.”
Trump also suggested the women who have come forward to accuse him were not physically attractive enough to merit his attention.
“Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you,” he said when speaking of one of the women.
Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, said Trump made unwanted sexual advances toward her at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007.
Zervos, 41, appeared at a news conference on Friday with Gloria Allred, a well-known Los Angeles attorney. Zervos was a contestant on The Apprentice in 2006 and later said she contacted Trump to inquire about a job with one of his businesses.
Zervos said she had an initial meeting with Trump, where he discussed a potential job with her, adding that when they parted, he kissed her on the lips and asked for her telephone number.
She said weeks later Trump called to invite her to meet him at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she said she was expecting to have dinner with the New York billionaire.
Instead, she described a series of unwanted kisses and touching by Trump, which she said she repeatedly rejected.
“He tried to kiss me again ... and I said: ‘Dude, you’re tripping right now,’ attempting to make it clear I was not interested,” she said.
Zervos said Trump eventually stopped and began talking as if they were in a job interview, adding that she was later offered a low-paying job at a Trump-owned golf course.
At the time, Trump had recently married his third and current wife, Melania Trump, and the couple had an infant son.
In a statement released by his campaign, Trump denied he was ever alone in a hotel room with Zervos and claimed to have only a vague recollection of meeting her.
He lashed out at the media for creating “a theater of absurdity that threatens to tear our democratic process apart and poison the minds of the American public.”
Late on Friday, the Trump campaign released a statement in which a cousin of Servos said he was “shocked and bewildered” by her account.
John Barry of Mission Viejo, California, said in the statement that Zervos “wishes she could still be on reality TV, and in an effort to get that back she’s saying all of these negative things about Mr Trump.”
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