Donald Trump sought to discredit the score of women who’ve recently accused him of making unwanted sexual advances on them during Wednesday’s presidential debate in Las Vegas.
The Republican presidential nominee claimed that the allegations “have been largely debunked” and that they are coming from “people I don’t know.”
He repeatedly charged Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with having her campaign push forward the accusers. He also tried to turn the discussion on the recent undercover sting tapes released by conservative activist James O’Keefethat showed Democratic operatives bragging about paying protesters to incite violence at the Manhattan billionaire’s rallies, including at one in Chicago that had to be canceled.
O’Keefe, however, has been repeatedly discredited for past videos that he manipulatively edited to show an intended narrative.
Pivoting back to the allegations against him, Trump called them “totally false.”
“I didn’t even apologize to my wife, who’s sitting right here, because I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I didn’t know any of these women. I didn’t see these women. The woman on the plane. I think they want fame, or her campaign did it. And I think it’s her campaign.”
He then returned to the O’Keefe tapes, saying Clinton backers were involved with telling people to get “violent” and “start fist fights” at his rallies, adding that if it wasn’t her campaign that brought these women forward, they just wanted to “get their 10 minutes of fame.”
“It was all fiction,” Trump said. “It was lies and it was fiction.”
Clinton criticized Trump for saying at recent rallies the women who made the accusations against him weren’t attractive enough for him.
“I did not say that,” Trump said. “I did not say that. I did not say that.”
“Look at her, I don’t think so,” Clinton said, referencing a line from a Trump rally this past week. “About another woman, he said ‘that wouldn’t be my first choice.”
She later added that he called a People magazine writer who made allegations against him “disgusting.”
“Nobody has more respect for women than I do,” Trump said. “Nobody.
Audible laughs were heard in the crowd.
“Frankly, those stories have been largely debunked,” he said. “She mentions this, which is all fiction, all fictionalized … Possibly started by her very sleazy campaign.”
“What isn’t fictionalized is her emails,” he continued, mentioning that she “destroyed” 33,000 emails “criminally.”
“The other things are false, but honestly, I’d love to talk about ISIS and other things,” he said.
As reported by Business Insider