Donald Trump slams Republican ‘self-righteous hypocrites’ for telling him to step down after sex boast tape scandal as he prepares to face off with Hillary Clinton in second presidential debate
WITH just hours to go before his second public debate showdown with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has blasted his party's big wigs as "hypocrites" for deserting him following his sex boast tape scandal - and even tried to turn the tables on Clinton by bringing up unproven allegations about husband Bill.
With it being commonly accepted that Mrs Clinton won the first debate, Trump wasted no time in the hours leading up to the critical second face off - by seizing on never-proven sexual assault allegations against former president Bill Clinton.
It was a dramatic escalation of personal attacks as he sought to deflect fallout from his own sexually aggressive comments.
The Republican presidential nominee tweeted a link on Sunday to an interview with Juanita Broaddrick, and its headline that she "relives brutal rapes."
Broaddrick's lawsuit against Bill Clinton accusing him of rape was dismissed in 2001 and criminal charges were never filed. Clinton has always denied the allegations.
More than two dozen Republican office holders have declared since Friday that they will not vote for Trump and many have called on him to step aside after his vulgar descriptions of sexual advances on women were revealed in the sex boast recording from 2005.
While the Donald, as his first wife liked to call him, has not spoken publicly about the tape or the reaction to it, he has been tweeting and re-tweeting calling his opponents among the prominent Republicans “self-righteous hypocrites” and predicting it’ll be their poll numbers that will drop.
Sex and violence are bound to feature heavily as the wannabe presidents face off for the second time in St Louis tonight.
US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been pictured getting ready to jet off to the mid-Western city of St Louis tonight to battle each other for the second time face to face.
Democrat Clinton was seen boarding her campaign plane at White Plains in New York this afternoon as she prepared to travel to Missouri for the second US presidential debate, while across the city Trump was spotted leaving Trump Towers by car.
Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton, has been handed a golden opportunity by the latest revelation of sexist remarks by her Republican challenger Donald Trump.
Related stories
After Clinton bested Trump in their first angry TV clash, this was always going to be a grudge match — what the French like to call “the revenge”.
Expect blood on the carpet rather than the optimistic vision of morning in America once promised by Ronald Reagan, as Mrs Clinton berates Trump for sexism over his off-colour remarks recorded 11 years ago about pouncing on women.
Trump's risky move comes as he tries to save a flailing campaign facing unprecedented opposition from within his own party.
With just a month remaining before the election, Trump's task in Sunday night's debate is enormous, and perhaps insurmountable. Even before the recording of his remarks were made public, the businessman lagged behind Clinton after an undisciplined first debate. He is struggling to overcome deep skepticism among women about his temperament and qualifications to be commander in chief.
Breaking with the conventional good manners of the political class, in the first face off each candidate had branded the other not fit to be President even before this latest Trump gaffe.
Yesterday Trump was cheered by supporters as he left Trump Towers in New York - just hours after his wife Melania slammed his comments in a sex boast video from 2005 as "unacceptable and offensive".
Speaking out after the 11-year-old video clip re-emerged this week, former model Melania said
she found the remarks offensive - but did not represent her husband.
The Republican candidate greeted fans outside the glamorous Manhattan skyscraper, unfazed by the fact many prominent members of the party are calling for him to drop out of the race.
His public appearance came after his ex-model wife Melania Trump released a statement saying she found the remarks in the video "offensive".
She said on Saturday: "The words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to me. This does not represent the man that I know. He has a heart and mind of a leader."
Urging US citizens to forgive the Republican candidate, she added: "I hope people will accept this apology, as I have, and focus on the important issues facing our nation and the world."
Following the release of the recording, Trump said he was sorry "if anyone was offended" by his comments - before issuing another video apology in the face of intense criticism.
He said: "I've said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them.
"Anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong and I apologise.
"I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never, ever let you down."
Yesterday it emerged the married woman who was the subject of lewd comments made by Trump has been identified as former Access Hollywood host Nancy O'Dell.
Now, it has also been revealed Trump attempted to fire O'Dell just two years later from her role as host of "The Miss USA Pageant" - because he didn't want a pregnant woman hosting the show.
Today Trump told the there was "zero chance I'll quit" following the release of the video - despite his running mate Mike Pence claiming he was "offended" by the comments in it.
Trump said: "I’d never withdraw. I’ve never withdrawn in my life. No, I’m not quitting this race. I have tremendous support. People are calling and saying; ‘Don’t even think about doing anything else but running’," he later told the .
"You have to see what’s going on. The real story is that people have no idea the support. I don’t know how that’s going to boil down but people have no idea the support.
"They’re not going to make me quit, and they can’t make me quit. The Republicans, you’ve got to remember, have been running for a long time. The reason they (the Democrats) don’t win is because they don’t stick together."
In a statement, Governor Mike Pence, who is running alongside Trump for the job of vice-president, said: “As a husband and father, I was offended by the words and actions described by Donald Trump in the eleven-year-old video released yesterday.
“I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them.
“I am grateful that he has expressed remorse and apologised to the American people.
“We pray for his family.”
The video recording from Access Hollywood, posted on , was filmed in 2005 to promote Trump's upcoming appearance on the US soap 'Days of Our Lives'.
And Trump was also heavily criticised by members of his own party - who called upon him to stand down.
In a video on Facebook, Utah Senator Mike Lee said: It’s occurred to me on countless occasions today that if anyone spoke to my wife or my daughter or my five sisters like the way Mr Trump has spoke to women, I wouldn’t hire that person, I wouldn’t want to be associated with that person."
Rep. Barbara Comstock added: "In light of these comments, Donald Trump should step aside and allow our party to replace him with Mike Pence or another appropriate nominee from the Republican Party.”
Meanwhile, a source told the Associated Press that Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, was "beside himself" - while his wife was furious.
Hillary Clinton, the Democrat nomination for the White House, tweeted to say his comments were 'horrific':
This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton)
The recording almost completely overshadowed the release of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign that revealed the contents of previously secret paid speeches to Wall Street. Clinton told bankers behind closed doors that she favoured "open trade." Such comments were at odds with her tough public comments about trade and Wall Street.
Clinton running mate Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine deflected questions about the emails and focused instead of Trump.
"I think there's kind of a piece of the jigsaw puzzle missing in Donald Trump where he does not look at women and consider them as equal to himself," Kaine said on CNN.
Trump’s cheerleaders have bravely tried to differ but the conventional wisdom is that Mrs Clinton won the first debate. She led in 18 of the 20 polls carried out afterwards in swing states — giving her an election-winning four-point lead, according to FiveThirtyEight — probably America’s most respected election number-crunchers.
Hillary won because she managed to needle “the Donald”, as his first wife liked to call him. He lost his temper and failed to land any major blows — he didn’t even call her “Crooked Hillary” to her face.
Hillary boasted about having done her prep for the debates — and for being President. The most telling moment came when she raised another charge of sexism against Trump: The case of Alicia Machado, a Latina winner of the Miss Universe pageant.
Trump gasped: “Where did you get that?” as she reminded the audience that when he ran the contest he had branded Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping”.
If Clinton is elected on November 8, women and Latin American voters will be key parts of her winning coalition of voters.
Immediately after that first debate, Trump barrelled into the spin room to claim it had gone “great”, even though the fact he had to act as his own spin doctor hinted that he really knew it could have gone better. It didn’t stop him unleashing an extraordinary string of late-night tweets later attacking both Clinton and Machado.
Trump may well come out swinging. He has said he regrets not having brought up Bill Clinton’s affairs with Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky.
In the past he has said that Bill Clinton brought “shame” on the Presidency and that in standing by him, Hillary, who claims to be a feminist, was actually an “enabler” of the abuse of vulnerable women.
Mrs Clinton has stuck with pretty much the same advisers since this race for the White House started, but there has been a lot of turnover in Team Trump. Some, like his tough new pollster Kellyanne Conway, think it is time he acted in a more presidential manner.
Sadly for both of them, that negative view is widely shared by the voters. Trump and Clinton have record disapproval ratings and it seems the winner of this election is most likely to be decided negatively — the one the electorate dislikes just a little bit less.
The second presidential debate of the 2016 general election campaign takes place Sunday at Washington University in St. Louis. It begins at 9pm US time or 2am UK time.
It will be streamed live on Twitter at debates.twitter.com
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368