In a rare solo news conference with reporters after a third woman came out on Wednesday to accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, President Donald Trump repeated the lie that the women who accused the president himself of misconduct were paid to do so.
In an erratic, angry rant to reporters Wednesday afternoon, Trump fought back against questions asking why he doesn’t seem to believe the three women who have said Judge Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct.
“I’ve been accused, I’ve been accused. I believe it was four women, you can check with Sean Hannity, you can check with Fox, because they covered it very strongly,” he said. “I was accused by four or five women who got paid a lot of money to make up stories about me. We caught them and the mainstream media refused to put it on television. They refused to even write about it. There were four women, and maybe more.”
Nearly two dozen women have credibly accused the president of sexual misconduct.
“I think the number’s four or five, but one had a mortgage paid off her house, maybe $52,000 dollars,” he added.
Trump was likely referring to women’s rights attorney Lisa Bloom, who set up a GoFundMe for client Jill Harth, who said in a 1997 lawsuit that Trump forced her into a bedroom at Mar-a-Lago and attempted to rape her. As Snopes points out, Harth never even wished to go public with the accusation to begin with ― she was outed by reporters in 2016. And her GoFundMe raised only $2,317.
“And the one that reported it, I believe was offered $750,000 to say bad things about me, and she’s the one that reported it,” Trump continued. “This woman is incredible. She reported it instead of taking the money. So I’ve had numerous accusations about me. I mean they made false statements about me knowing they were false. I never met them. I never met these people. And what did they do? What did they do? They took money in order to say bad things.”
Trump also suggested if George Washington were a current Supreme Court nominee, Democratic lawmakers would vote him down.
“George Washington, the Democrats would vote against him, just so you understand,” he said. “And he may have had a bad past, who knows? Didn’t he have a couple of things in his past? George Washington would be voted against one hundred percent by [Sen. Chuck] Schumer and the con artists. One hundred percent, one hundred percent.”
Earlier this year, the president took to Twitter to say the women making accusations about him were “taking money to make up stories.”
During Wednesday’s address, the president then said that the sexual abuse he has been accused of “absolutely” impacts how he views the claims waged against Brett Kavanaugh, who is accused of forcibly holding down a girl at a high school party, covering her mouth and attempting to take off her clothes. Two other women have also accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Professor Christine Blasey Ford is set to give testimony about her experience on Thursday.
“I’m a very famous person,” the president reminded the country. “People want fame. They want money ... It’s happened to me many times. I’ve had many false charges.”