One of Donald Trump’s most spirited surrogates on Wednesday offered up a bizarrely specific response to newly surfaced allegations that the Republican nominee groped a female passenger seated beside him on an airplane over 30 years ago.
Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson argued on CNN that a woman’s account of Trump lifting the armrest of a first-class seat to grope her was not credible because armrests were fixed in first-class cabins at the time.
“Guess what? First-class seats have fixed armrests!” Pierson said of Jessica Leeds’ account. “So what I can tell you about her story, if she was groped on a plane, it wasn’t by Donald Trump and it certainly wasn’t in first class.”
I’m never complaining about sports TV talk shows again. pic.twitter.com/r9tELXOchh
— Jason Gay (@jasongay) October 13, 2016
Leeds, who is now 74, told The New York Times in an interview published Wednesday that Trump reached for her breasts and tried to reach up her skirt on a flight to New York. She was a traveling executive at a paper company at the time and had never met Trump before.
The Trump campaign has insisted the story is false and sent a letter to the Times threatening them with a defamation lawsuit.
Pierson accused the women of coming forward because they want “fame.”
Her comments recounting the specific flights running into New York at the time with first-class cabins prompted her fellow CNN panelists to burst into laughter.
“We’re talking about the early 1980s, Don,” she said to CNN’s Don Lemon. “Seriously, back then you had planes—a DC 9, a DC 10, an MD 80, 707 and maybe an L 1011, but she said specifically this was to New York and this is what’s important. So we can X out the LC 11 and 10.”
Atlantic contributing editor Peter Beinart laughed at Pierson’s apparently encyclopedic plane model knowledge.
Airplane enthusiast group NYC Aviation sent a tweet noting that all of the airlines she mentioned flew into New York City at the time.
Hi @KatrinaPierson, the aircraft types you mentioned all did operate into New York City. https://t.co/pfFWPqlcDQ
— NYCAviation (@NYCAviation) October 13, 2016
It’s far too easy to refute any statement this woman makes. She is a fabricator and not credible on any subject. The mere fact that the “scampaign” keeps sending her out smacks of desperation, and I love it.
Lemon has had about enough of Pierson. He had to repeatedly call her out for not answering the question and shut down her babbling filibustering. The eye roll he gave as the went to the commercial break on this was priceless.
What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
So did all those planes have arm rests that raised up?
This whole issue coming up now is why it seems our push for early voting is wrong. How many that have already voted for Trump wish they could take their vote back?
He grabs, Pierson scabs.