As he continues his denial of the numerousย sexual assault allegations made against him in recent days, Donald Trump will reportedly begin to blame someone new for the sudden outpouring of reports: Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
The Wall Street Journalreported Fridayย that Trump's campaign is preparing to roll out an attack against Slimโa shareholder of New York Times Co. and a donor to the Hillary Clinton campaignโfor what the campaign considers a coordinated effort to drudge up decades' worth of ethically compromising interviews.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, the attack allows Trump to punch back against multiple parties, including the Clinton campaign and the New York Times, which published an article this week detailing the accounts of two women who say Trump sexually assaulted them. That article prompted Trump's lawyers to threaten a libel suit against theย Times.
The Trump campaign's attack on Slimย โis just another deranged right-wing conspiracy theory from Donald Trumpโs increasingly desperate campaign,โ Clintonโs press secretary, Brian Fallon, told the Wall Street Journal. Through a spokesperson, Slim denied that he's working to interfere with the election, calling Trump's accusations "totally false."
The Times'ย publisher,ย Arthur Sulzberger Jr., called Slim "an excellent shareholder who fully respects boundaries regarding the independence of our journalism. He has never sought to influence what we report.โ
On Thursday, the New York Times legal team responded to Trump's lawyers, who demanded that the Times retract its article with the accounts of two women who say Trump sexually assaulted them. The response was a mic-dropย moment for the newspaper. It stated the paper "welcome[s] the opportunity to have a court set him straight."