The following article by Michael Tackett was posted on the New York Times website December 12, 2017:
WASHINGTON — President Trump put himself once more at the center of the sexual harassment debate on Tuesday, repeating his contention that the women who have accused him of misconduct fabricated the allegations and describing Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, one of his leading critics, as a “lightweight” who “would do anything” for campaign contributions.
In derisive morning Twitter posts, the president responded to three of the women who had come forward on Monday to renew their charges from last year that Mr. Trump had sexually assaulted them before he entered politics, and to Ms. Gillibrand after she called on him to resign on Monday.
In the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump was put on the defensive by the appearance of an “Access Hollywood” tape. He was heard in the recording boasting of sexual conquests and celebrity entitlement, and the ensuing reaction led to a number of women coming forward to describe specific episodes that included walking in on them changing during beauty pageants as well as groping and kissing them. But Mr. Trump seemed to have weathered those accusations until the flood of recent allegations against powerful men revived the issue of sexual harassment with a newfound fury.
By responding so aggressively on Tuesday, the president ensured that calls for renewed scrutiny of the women’s allegations would gain new momentum and that Democrats, who have aggressively recruited women to run for Congress, will have a volatile new issue in the midterm elections next year.
“Historically, Democrats have run against Republicans on a war on women theme,” said Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster. “The success that Democrats had using the war-on-women theme had started to fade away, but now there is no denying that Republicans have a problem with women right now, and most of these are self-inflicted. This has far-ranging consequences for 2018.”
In addition to his criticism of Ms. Gillibrand, the president denied knowing or meeting many of his accusers, but that assertion was immediately undermined when photographs of Mr. Trump with some of the women began to appear.
Ms. Gillibrand, who said she learned of the president’s tweet while she was attending a bipartisan Bible study on Tuesday morning, was quick to fire back. “It was a sexist smear attempting to silence my voice, and I will not be silenced on this issue,” she said. “Neither will the women who stood up to the president yesterday.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denied the suggestion that Mr. Trump’s post carried sexual overtones, saying that he was referring to general corruption in the American political system. Mr. Trump had donated at least $4,800 to Ms. Gillibrand’s campaign in the 2010 election cycle, and during the campaign, he often said that he was an expert at exploiting the political system for personal gain.
“Only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read” the president’s words as sexual innuendo, Ms. Sanders said at her daily briefing at the White House.
“He’s not alleging anything. He’s talking about the way that our system functions as it is,” Ms. Sanders said. “That comment, frankly isn’t something new,” she added, saying that “he’s used that same terminology many times in reference to men. There’s no way that this is sexist at all.”
Dozens of congressional Democrats, led by women, strongly disagreed and rushed to support Ms. Gillibrand. Among the more forceful was the normally reserved Senator Mazie K. Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, who said on Twitter: “.@realDonaldTrump is a misogynist, compulsive liar, and admitted sexual predator. Attacks on Kirsten are the latest example that no one is safe from this bully. He must resign.”
“In his tweets, whether intentionally or not, Donald Trump cues these gendered beliefs that women are less capable (or “lightweight”) and that ambition in women is something to be maligned,” Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, wrote in an email.
It was Senate Democratic women, including Ms. Gillibrand, who forced Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, a fellow Democrat, to announce his resignation last week, clearing away any ambiguity over their push to hold the president accountable. By Tuesday night, some 60 Democratic women in Congress had demanded an inquiry into the allegations against the president, an unlikely prospect given Republican majorities in the House and Senate but nonetheless a measure of the intensity that the issue has generated.
Ms. Matthews said Mr. Trump was following his playbook by going “full force against accusers.”
“I think he’s worse with women, but he just throws every insult that he can possibly throw,” she said. “That ‘would do anything to get elected’ is fairly ominous — it can be taken in a way that is very suggestive, and I think that is obviously horrible.”
She said that the attacks could drain support for Republicans, particularly from white, college-educated women. The recent elections in Virginia, where 11 Democratic women defeated incumbent Republicans in legislative races, were seen in part as a referendum on Mr. Trump.
In his tweets, Mr. Trump blamed Democrats for resurrecting the accusations against him, saying that they were a result of Democrats’ being unable to prove whether his campaign had worked with the Russians to sway the election.
“Despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the Democrats have been unable to show any collusion with Russia,” he wrote. “Now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met.”
The special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s meddling and possible coordination with people in Mr. Trump’s circle has dominated his first year in office and will be a major factor next year as well. But now, Mr. Trump will also have to contend with more than a dozen women who have accused him of sexual misconduct in a much more charged environment than at the end of the campaign. And in some cases, his contention that he never met or knew many of the women has been refuted by photographs and videos.
People magazine posted on Twitter on Tuesday a photograph of Natasha Stoynoff, one of its reporters, with Mr. Trump at his wedding to Melania Knauss in January 2005. Ms. Stoynoff has said that later that year, she interviewed the couple for an article about their first anniversary at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where she says Mr. Trump assaulted her.
Summer Zervos was a contestant on “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump’s long-running reality television series, and a video exists of her on the show. She says Mr. Trump made unwanted sexual advances toward her in 2007.
Two additional accusers have participated in beauty pageants that Mr. Trump ran. Temple Taggart McDowell, who represented Utah in Miss USA in 1997, told NBC News that Mr. Trump kissed her on the lips during a rehearsal dinner that year. Ninni Laaksonen, who competed for Finland in Miss Universe, said Mr. Trump groped her in 2006. There are photos of Mr. Trump with both women.
A fifth woman, Jessica Drake, an adult-film actress, said Mr. Trump groped her at a golf tournament in 2006. Last year, Ms. Drake presented an undated photo of her appearing with Mr. Trump at a news conference.
In a joint statement released Tuesday afternoon, four women who have accused Mr. Trump of misconduct — Lisa Boyne, Rachel Crooks, Samantha Holvey and Melinda McGillivray — criticized the president for what they described as denials “straight out of the Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby playbook.”
“The best way for Americans to know the truth about our claims, and those made by other women abused by President Trump, is an independent investigation by Congress, the Department of Justice or another credible party,” the women wrote. “If President Trump is so confident about his claims, he should also support a move to investigate and air the facts.”
Correction: December 12, 2017
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a Democratic senator from Hawaii. She is Senator Mazie K. Hirono, not Mazie Horono.
View the post here.