So the much awaited evidence from Team Trump that Pence promised this morning would debunk the sexual assault claims has dropped in the form of an interview in the NY Post. And no. This is not made up or the Onion:
Donald Trump’s campaign says a British man is countering claims that the GOP presidential nominee groped a woman on a cross-country flight more than three decades ago.
The man says he was sitting across from the accuser and contacted the Trump campaign because he was incensed by her account — which is at odds with what he witnessed.
“I have only met this accuser once and frankly cannot imagine why she is seeking to make out that Trump made sexual advances on her. Not only did he not do so (and I was present at all times) but it was she that was the one being flirtatious,” Anthony Gilberthorpe said in a note provided to The Post by the Trump campaign.
In an exclusive interview arranged by the campaign, Gilberthorpe said he was on the flight — in either 1980 or 1981— where Jessica Leeds claimed Trump groped her.
***Indeed, Gilberthorpe claimed, Leeds was “trying too hard” in her attempt to win Trump over.
“She wanted to marry him,” Gilberthorpe said of Leeds, who apparently made the confession when Trump excused himself and went to the bathroom.
There was no kissing, but the “shrill” Leeds was “very much in your face” with the real estate developer.
Not only did Trump not grope the woman, but she wanted HIM. But wait, it gets better, and by better I mean OMFG WAY WORSE I CAN NOT BELIEVE THIS SHIT BECAUSE YOU CAN NOT MAKE IT UP:
Gilberthorpe made headlines in 2014, when he went public with a claim that as a 17-year-old he procured boys (some who “could have been” underage”) for sex parties with high-ranking British politicians.
Gilberthorpe has no evidence to back up his claim — just his self-described excellent memory.
“What she said about Trump is wrong,” he told The Post. “I mean, no decent human being could sit by and have a woman go on television and tell the United States of America — accuse an individual of sexually molesting. It’s wrong for Trump, it’s wrong for me. But you know something else? It’s wrong for the American people,” he said.
You, sir, are no decent human being, so stop speaking for us.
Dexter
Are we absolutely sure that Trump campaign is not an elaborate trolling on USA?
MuckJagger
Horse, meet shit.
Corner Stone
Damn koala. I guess I should be thankful it’s not a freakin’ panda.
Corner Stone
@Dexter: I just keep expecting the cast and crew of Monty Python to walk on stage at one of his rallys and take a long and sustained bow.
geg6
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Seriously? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Major Major Major Major
“I was present at all times” should be the next “I am aware of all internet traditions.”
zzyzx
Wait, who spends an entire flight watching the people across the aisle, looking for evidence of sexual harassment?
? Martin
Actually, that should work fine for Trump. His supporters will buy it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone: I’ve got some picture for ya.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
John Podesta engages in some pro level trolling: link
skerry
This story does put Trump on the same plane as Leeds, a woman he “never met”.
Villago Delenda Est
My. This guy is SO FUCKING CREDIBLE that I’ve just lost all my shit and am willing to swear eternal fealty to the tiny-fingered, cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing shitgibbon.
Also, next week, I will be crowned Tsar of all the Russias.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Damn. What’s next – is he going to – nope, nope. Whatever I say, he’ll probably have done it.
Gemina13
Please let Gloria Allred have just 5 minutes with this twatwaffle.
Mary G
Can he say whether or not the plane’s armrests were fixed in place or not?
What a load of hogwash.
Villago Delenda Est
@skerry: Surely he would have remembered her! He has, by his own account, the world’s best memory.
Except, apparently, when he is under oath and vulnerable to perjury charges.
Corner Stone
@BillinGlendaleCA:
***Shutters***
Gelfling 545
Sounds like just the right type of person to come forward to “prove” Trump’s “innocence”, for a reasonable fee. Even if this were remotely accurate, was he present at all times with all 12 women? Perhaps, if the price is right, he was. Just wondering what about this the Trump campaign thinks will be persuasive.
Baud
Was al-Baghdadi not available to vouch for Trump?
jon
The Trump campaign’s vetting process is really making me want him in charge of our military and secrets and economy. He finds the best people Every Possible Time, doesn’t he?
debbie
50 cents says he voted for Brexit.
trollhattan
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Oh, that’s a solid burn.
sigaba
So much worse, and stupider, than I thought it would be.
sukabi
John Cole, thank you for being timely, and to the point. Perfect headline.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: He got Assangeface to rise to the bait, too.
msdc
@zzyzx: The same guy who recalls a flight from “either 1980 or 1981” with absolute clarity because he remembers how there was absolutely no sexual harrassment from the nobody real estate developer across the aisle.
To be fair, encounters with Donald Trump that don’t involve sexual harrassment or assault seem to be getting increasingly rare.
Baud
@debbie: Why is 50 Cent weighing in on this?
Corner Stone
Halperin is just dying to say something positive about Trump right now. It’s killing him.
Villago Delenda Est
@jon: All those secrets in Hillary’s 300,000,000 emails that are now in the hands of our enemies, the Danes. I swoon to think…
Corner Stone
“She would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.”
That is so freaking good. So good.
debbie
@Baud:
How could he not?
trollhattan
@Gemina13:
Even a moron egotist like Trump knows he can’t sue over these revelations, because discovery. He is so cornered and keeps denying he’s even in the room.
Baud
RIP Parody
Dawn of civilization — 2016
sukabi
“I remember it well, it was 1980 or 1981, the ship set sail for a 3 hour tour. Mary Anne was ALL OVER the Lovely Mr. Howell…”
Can I have my money now?
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: Real dumb response by him, too.
mdblanche
For those of us not aware of all internet traditions, what is the significance of “green balloons”?
West of the Cascades
The Guardian’s liveblog of this was delightful in its understatement:
Donald Trump’s campaign has put forward a British man to counter accusations of sexual assault made against the candidate by a 74-year-old woman, who alleged in an interview with the New York Times that Trump groped her on a flight more than three decades ago.
Anthony Gilberthorpe, a former Conservative activist who last made headlines in 2014 when he alleged that he had once supplied politicians with underage boys for Tory sex parties, told the New York Post that Jessica Leeds’ account doesn’t square with his memory. [emphasis added]
“I have only met this accuser once and frankly cannot imagine why she is seeking to make out that Trump made sexual advances on her,” Gilberthorpe said. “Not only did he not do so (and I was present at all times) but it was she that was the one being flirtatious.”
Gilberthorpe told the New York Post that Leeds was “shrill” and “wanted to marry,” Trump, quoting an alleged conversation he had with Leeds when Trump was in the bathroom.
Gilberthorpe would have been 17 at the time.
Keth P.
“She’s not pretty enough for me to sexually assault” may actually be the better defense in this case. The surrogates are going to get laughed off TV (again) over this one. This is absolutely the worst crisis management I have ever seen, by a long shot.
@mdblanche: IIRC it was a safe word for some politician who got arrested for
beating upraping aprostitutewoman he knew and likely drugged. He said she never said “Green balloons” so he kept beating her.PhoenixRising
‘Even in the early 1980s, an encounter with Donald J Trump in which he did not grab the crotch of the woman next to him was highly memorable’ is another way to say it.
C. Isaac
This account is less believable than the Trump / Pence slash fic I saw the other day.
It all started with that kissyface picture of Trump and Pence with the subtext of ‘I just start kissing them…’ and it spun off into crazy land from there.
sukabi
@skerry: never met, never sat next too, and yet he has a witness, amazing!
Villago Delenda Est
@Keth P.: When you don’t have the first clue that you’re in a crisis situation in the first place, this is understandable.
Baud
In her first official act as president, President Clinton issues an executive order declaring the 2016 election a wicked bad dream.
Loneoak
This is peak I’m Rubber You’re Glue.
WereBear
Is EVERY male involved with Trump some kind of degenerate or is that just an impression I am forming?
Mary G
@West of the Cascades: Hopefully his schoolmaster will come out and say he was in class that day and could not have been on the plane.
TaMara (HFG)
I keep thinking this can’t get any weirder…and then it does. I wish I could enjoy this, but I’m beginning to worry about how his meltdown is going to influence his crazed followers (and that’s what they are, not supporters, but Jim Jones style nuts).
PPCLI
@mdblanche: It’s apparently a safeword for BDSM play, to call a halt to everything. (When you are role-playing, you may be using normal distress words like “stop” as part of the play, so you go for an expression that you would not normally use under such circumstances.)
mdblanche
@zzyzx: The same kind of person who procures underage boys for sex parties with high-ranking British politicians.
debbie
@Keth P.:
I’d like one of them to be asked if they believe Trump when he says he sees a 35-year-old man when he looks in the mirror.
Joyce H
What’s most incredible about this is the fellow’s claim that when he saw this 74 year old woman on television, he recognized her as a woman he saw ONCE, forty years ago. Uh-huh. Right.
But this quote from Trump today, talking about why aren’t women accusing Obama – “He better be careful because they could say it about anybody.”
Does anyone else think that sounds like instructions to his supporters to get out there with an accusation against Obama, try to level the playing field? (And yeah, I know, Obama isn’t on the ballot, but he doesn’t seem to make that distinction.)
redshirt
TS
@skerry:
Wonder if that liberal media will pick up on this – The republican excuse for a candidate never thinks of the consequences when he finds someone to speak for him – he just puts them right into the sunlight to prove he’s lied from the beginning.
PPCLI
Surely whether or not he was on that flight is something that can be documented. It would be an incredible coincidence if so.
It wouldn’t add any more weight to his testimony if true, but it would be immediately disqualifying if false, and simple enough to establish.
Peale
They would have been better off coming up with a woman to lie, whose claim could be easily refuted, and then use the process of discrediting her to cast doubt on everyone else. What kind of ratfuck operation is Roger running here? Sad.
Brachiator
I said in another thread that this shit had become a painful farce.
Need. New. Synonyms.
This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
— Woody Allen’s “Bananas”
JCJ
@Corner Stone:
Well done
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@mdblanche: Safe word.
sukabi
@Mary G: more than likely he was in the British equivalent of juvie.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Then there’s this:
Link
Villago Delenda Est
@redshirt: /highfive
Bill E Pilgrim
The word cloud for this is a thing of beauty, and I haven’t even seen one yet.
Much to the Trump for President crew’s chagrin, the words PROCURED and UNDERAGE and you know SEX may appear just a little more prominently alongside the word TRUMP than they had hoped.
PPCLI
@PPCLI: Though perhaps the woman herself wisely didn’t say openly what the specific flight date was, to make it harder for people to make crap up and claim they were there.
PhoenixRising
@PPCLI: Could we just not? Pretend that this is something that requires to be taken seriously? A 17 year old sitting in first class who gets the gossip download from a 35 year old woman he’s never met…
Hillary should prep for debate 3 with just chilled vodka and ‘The Princess Bride’.
“We are men of action. Lies do not become us.”
“You keep using that word. But I do not think it means…”
MomSense
Is this real life?
Villago Delenda Est
@Peale: Tertiary syphilis is a hell of a disease.
Peale
@PPCLI: LOL. Suddenly Donald and this guy produce their boarding passes form 1980. They save everything, you know, everything. Plus I’m sure the passenger records from the cusp of the computer age were seamlessly transferred from Pan Ams punch card system to Delta Air Lines through six mergers. Plus someone kept the security video. There’s got to be security video from 1980.
debbie
Day One of a Trump presidency:
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill E Pilgrim: They NEVER think these things through.
p.a.
tRump campaign, meet Tracy Flick. Tracy, meet tRump campaign.
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: The babies, uh, looked at you, eh?
sukabi
@TS: I think it speaks more that the kind of people that will still associate with him, even for imagined money, aren’t even CLOSE to being decent, competent people. They are deplorable.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Brachiator: In the spirit of “lurve”, since we’re doing Woody, how about a “flarce”
debit
@Major Major Major Major: That episode has the best line in the history of The Simpsons. “Sex Cauldron? I thought they closed that place down.”
sukabi
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Headline is wrong, should read Right Wing Terrorists…
Baud
@debbie: No. Day 1 of the Trump presidency has law enforcement doing that.
gorram
I mean what else could you do? Ask The Gays?
Major Major Major Major
@debit: Best line? I don’t know… ‘cromulent’ is in the dictionary now.
Origuy
@mdblanche: From the Balloon Juice Lexicon:
The BJ Lexicon. Learn it. Live it. Love it. (Can someone please update it?)
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@mdblanche:
@PPCLI:
From the Balloon Juice Lexicon:
Since that time, a number of BJ meet ups have featured green balloons in order that internet friends/meatspace strangers will know one another.
EDIT: Darn you, Origuy! Darn you straight to heck and back!
Bobbo
This is something out of Monty Python. The most over the top Trumpanistas won’t believe it but of course they will tell anyone who asks that they do
Mart
Sounds like Ferguson’s Mike Brown’s Witness 40, a woman who not only saw everything about the Brown shooting different from everyone else. She testified that she just happened to be in Ferguson that day to check out if her daddy’s negative stories about the coloreds were true. Same woman who said she witnessed another huge St. Louis story about a boy being kidnapped and killed. In the kidnapping case her testimony was tossed as crazy. In Brown’s case she was used as a lead witness to the DA. The DA when questioned about her reliability after the fact, stood by her testimony to the grand jury. The douche.
Gin & Tonic
I flew quite a lot for business in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Through all sorts of chicanery I ended up in first class from time to time. I have to say that I can’t recall a damn thing about any of those flights. The idea that some random dude would recall *every detail* about the interactions between two strangers 35 years later just doesn’t pass the laugh test.
hueyplong
I was also on that flight (and was present at all times). Not only were the armrests fixed, but they were 3 feet high. Gilberthorpe spent the entire flight telling Donald Trump about the physical attributes of 17 year old boys he “knew,” so Trump could not possibly have been groping that woman he didn’t find all that attractive, despite her incessant pleas that he please, please pay more attention to her. I was 12 at the time but very precocious, and remember it like it was yesterday. Trump was a gentleman thoughout and everyone sensed his strength. Thank you for allowing me to set the record straight.
Mark B
I thought Leeds’ story was the weakest of all of the accounts, since there were no other known witnesses. And now one of Trump’s advisers shows and remembers her and verifies many details of her story, including the part where a creepy guy across the aisle saw the whole thing and did nothing to help. They just don’t know when to stop talking, do they?
Hey, I can post again! Woo HOO!
Just One More Canuck
“Dear Mr. President, there are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot!”
– Anthony Gilberthorpe
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark B: See my comment @69.
piratedan
and we all know that 17 year olds fly in first class all the time, its practically mandated airline policy.
mdblanche
@MomSense: People are beginning to have their doubts.
@Major Major Major Major: Its presence embiggens the dictionary.
Mark B
@Villago Delenda Est: The odd thing about Leeds’ account was the part where she got picked to sit next to Trump for reasons unknown to her. Is there any doubt now that Gilberthorpe was the one that ‘procured’ her?
different-church-lady
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: not sure I get the inside parts of the joke, nor the catcalls in response. But dayum, is Twitter a Superfund site or what?
geg6
Anyone wanna bet this is Farage’s contribution to his buddy The Donald’s shitshow?
Xof
Is there anything directly from the Trump campaign on this? I’d love to link to something besides the NY Post piece…
PPCLI
@Bobbo: Yes! In fact, it was the talk show “Stake your claim”.
The Trump defender is slightly less plausible than the guy claiming that he wrote all Shakespeare’s plays “and me wife and I wrote his sonnets”.
different-church-lady
I can’t remember which valued commenter said it a few days ago, but I now agree it’s increasingly likely Trump ends his concession speech with, “The Aristocrats!”
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
Sure beats asking the waitress where the BJ meetup is.
Craig
Uh, Donald? You said the other day you never met this woman. Now with this “evidence” you have admitted you not only have met this woman but were indeed sitting next to her on the plane.
Fire your lawyers now.
chopper
this is just…i mean…i can’t…
adorable trnc
@different-church-lady: Concession speech? You’ve been hitting the sauce pretty hard, eh?
jenn
@different-church-lady: One of the Podesta emails leaked by Wikileaks/Assange was a recipe for risotto.
Ghayduke
@Dexter:
Pretty sure it is
MCA1
Gilberthorpe just happens to be the same guy who would go on 17 years later to hire a young woman to seduce the primary UKIP rival of one Nigel Farage and tape their pillow talk in his apartment before leaking it to the press. Just a total coincidence, though, I’m sure.
JDM
@Corner Stone: Andy Kaufman. Has anyone actually seen the body?
Avi
Someone on Twitter pointed out that Gilberthorpe is an anagram of “blithe groper.” You can’t make this stuff up.