Trump vows to sue accusers; Clinton unveils new strategy

Associated Press

Steering his campaign toward controversy yet again, Donald Trump vowed Saturday to sue every woman who has accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior. He called them “liars” whose allegations he blamed Democrats for orchestrating.

Trump’s blunt threat of legal action upstaged his planned focus on serious-minded policy during a speech in Gettysburg.

“All of these liars will be sued once the election is over,” Trump said. He added later: “I look so forward to doing that.” An additional woman came forward with allegattions against Trump on Saturday.

Trump also appeared before a packed house at the I-X Center near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on Saturday night.

Earlier in the day, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton spoke at a campaign event in Pittsburgh. Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane between rallies in Pennsylvania, Clinton said that, after three debates, she was no longer thinking about responding to what Trump says anymore and would “let the American people decide what he offers and what we offer.”

Clinton said she would be focusing the days remaining before the election helping down-ballot Democrats. To that end, she assailed the state’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, saying in Pittsburgh that he has refused to “stand up” to Trump as she touted his Democratic challenger, Katie McGinty.

Also on Saturday, an adult film actress said the billionaire kissed her and two other women on the lips “without asking for permission” when they met him after a golf tournament in 2006.

Trump has denied all the allegations, while insisting some of the women weren’t attractive enough for him to want to pursue.

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” he said. Without offering evidence, he surmised that Clinton or the Democratic National Committee had put the women up to it.

Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane, Clinton said: “I saw where our opponent Donald Trump went to Gettysburg, one of the most extraordinary places in American history, and basically said if he’s president he’ll spend his time suing women who have made charges against him based on his behavior.” She also said the suggestion that Democrats or her campaign were encouraging women to level accusations against Trump “inaccurate.”

Trump’s broadside against the women came at the start of an otherwise substantive speech that sought to weave the many policy ideas he has put forward into a single, cohesive agenda that he said he would pursue aggressively during his first three months in office.

The Republican nominee vowed to lift restrictions on domestic energy production, label China as a currency manipulator and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, familiar themes to supporters who have flocked to his rallies this year.

“This is my pledge to you, and if we follow these steps, we will once again have a government of, by and for the people,” Trump said, invoking a phrase from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Though mostly a recap of policies he’s proposed before, Trump’s speech included a few new elements, such as a freeze on hiring new federal workers and a two-year mandatory minimum sentence for immigrants who re-enter the U.S. illegally after being deported a first time. In a pledge sure to raise eyebrows on Wall Street, he said he’d block a potential merger between AT&T and media conglomerate Time Warner.

Translating his proposals into digestible bullet points, he offered to-the-point titles for the legislative vehicles he’d need Congress to approve to accomplish his goals, such as the “End Illegal Immigration Act” and the “Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act.”

Throughout the GOP primary, Trump was criticized for shying away from detailed policy proposals. His speech, aides said, would form the core of his platform.