This post has been updated.
Donald Trump denied the recent allegations that he inappropriately touched several women in a speech railing against the press–and the accusers themselves.
“These vicious claims about me of inappropriate conduct with women are totally and absolutely false,” he said. “These claims are all fabricated and they are pure fiction and they are outright lies. These events never, ever happened.”
Trump went after the women who accused him of groping or forcibly kissing them, addressing each case individually, attempting to cast doubt on their accusations.
“You look at these people and study these people, and you will understand also,” he said.
“These people are horrible people,” he said later, referring to the women who accused him of sexual misconduct. “They’re horrible, horrible liars and interestingly, it happens to appear 26 days before our very important election. Isn’t that amazing?”
Of the woman who told the New York Times that Trump groped her on an airplane, Trump said that the Times published a “totally fabricated and false story.”
“Another ridiculous tale, no witnesses, no nothing,” Trump said.
He then moved on to the People Magazine writer who alleged that Trump forcibly kissed her when she was interviewing him for a story on the first anniversary of his marriage to Melania. He sought to cast doubt on the writer’s claims by questinoing why she was only coming forward now.
“I ask a very simple question. Why wasn’t it part of the story that appeared 20 — or 12 years ago?” he asked the crowd. “Take a look. You take a look. Look at her, look at her words. And you tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”
Trump said that the women’s “claims are preposterous, ludicrous and defy truth, common sense and logic.”
“We already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies and it will be made public be in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time, very soon.”
Trump referenced a New York Times piece he said was published over the weekend, though it’s not immediately to which story he was referring.
“This weekend, the New York Times published a full page hit piece with another claim from an individual who has been totally discredited based on the many, many, many emails and letters that she sent to our office over the years, looking for work, ‘Donald is great,’ wanting to go to my rallies,” Trump said, adding that the Times “refused to use the evidence” Trump presented to them.
Trump also took out his anger over the several accusations on the media, which he accused of conspiring with the Hillary Clinton campaign to destroy him.
Trump said “the slander and libels” published by “the Clinton machine and New York Times and other media outlets” were part of a “concerted, coordinated and vicious attack.”
“It’s not coincidence that these attacks come at the exact same moment, and altogether at the same time as Wikileaks releases documents, exposing the masses of international corruption of the Clinton machine,” he said.
Trump said that journalists no longer care about facts.
“The great editors of the past from The New York Time” and others, ladies and gentlemen, are spinning in their graves,” he said.
“I will not allow the Clinton machine to turn our campaign into a discussion of their slander and lies but will remain focused on the issues facing the American people,” he continued. “These attacks are orchestrated by the Clintons and their media allies. The only thing Hillary Clinton has going for herself is the press. Without the press, she is absolutely zero.”
Watch a clip from Trump’s speech:
