WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Donald Trump heatedly rejected the growing list of sexual-assault allegations against him, calling them "pure fiction" Thursday and his female accusers "horrible, horrible liars."
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Hillary Clinton said "the disturbing stories just keep on coming" about her Republican opponent, but first lady Michelle Obama's passionate response to the sexual-assault allegations carried the day. In battleground New Hampshire, the first lady warned that the New York businessman's behavior "is not something we can ignore."
After years of working to end "this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect ... we're hearing these exact same things on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it," Michelle Obama declared. "We can't expose our children to this any longer, not for another minute, let alone for four years."
She continued, "Enough is enough."
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If Americans let Trump win the presidential election, "we are telling our sons it's OK to humiliate women. We are telling our daughters this is the way they deserve to be treated. We are telling all of our kids that bigotry and bullying is perfectly acceptable," she said.
With Election Day less than four weeks away, Trump again found himself on the defense in the face of allegations of sexual misconduct, less than a week after a video surfaced in which he bragged about kissing and groping women without their permission.
In articles published late Wednesday by The New York Times and The Palm Beach Post, women accused Trump of acting on the behavior he described in the video. Also, a People magazine reporter offered a first-person account, accusing Trump of attacking her while she was in Florida to interview him and his pregnant wife in 2005.
As he campaigned Thursday in Florida, Trump denied the allegations and blamed them on Clinton's campaign and the complicit news media. He promised to sue his media critics and said he was preparing evidence that would discredit his accusers, whom he called "horrible people. They're horrible, horrible liars."
In West Palm Beach, Trump's supporters cheered loudly as he defended himself, and one supporter shouted "Braveheart" repeatedly as Trump told the crowd that he was ultimately fighting for them.
During an evening appearance in Columbus, Ohio, Trump said he "never met" some of the women.
"I don't know who they are," he said, adding that they "made up stories."
"These vicious claims about me, of inappropriate conduct with women, are totally and absolutely false. And the Clintons know it," he said earlier. He asked why his accusers had waited years and then made their allegations less than a month before the election.
His comments came soon after he called a reporter "a sleazebag" for asking whether he had ever touched or groped a woman without her consent.
Trump's attacks on his accusers' credibility marked a break from campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, who earlier in the week highlighted a Clinton tweet that said "every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported."
Conway encouraged more women to step forward with allegations against Bill Clinton, building on the campaign's Sunday decision to take three of the former president's accusers to the second presidential debate.
The former president said during a San Francisco fundraiser that Trump's "campaign is promising more scorched-earth attacks. Now that's up to him. He can run his campaign however he chooses. And frankly, I don't care if he goes after me."
Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, blamed the media and Hillary Clinton for what he characterized as "a discussion of slander and lies" targeting Trump.
Pence, the governor of Indiana, earlier had avoided the national reporters who pay to travel with his campaign in Pennsylvania. His Twitter account showed him meeting with religious leaders and stopping at a restaurant -- after a Pence spokesman said the vice presidential nominee was attending private fundraising events.
Pence's remarks Thursday evening at a GOP dinner in Orefield, Pa., were the first time he has addressed multiple allegations of sexual assault leveled at Trump. Pence said the claims are "unsubstantiated."
He added that Democrats are trying to draw attention away from hacked emails that are unflattering to Clinton's campaign.
Republican leaders across the country said they were deeply troubled by the allegations against Trump, but there was no evidence of more of them abandoning the GOP nominee. Over the weekend, dozens of Republican senators and congressmen vowed that they would not vote for him, and many called on him to leave the presidential race.
Some reconsidered after Trump's aggressive weekend debate performance.
In what he called an increasingly "muddy" election, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson raised complaints about Clinton on Thursday and wondered aloud what could change voters' minds at this point.
"Is there a deal-breaker out there? How many emails have to be destroyed? How many investigations have to be concluded with question marks? How many comments have to come out from one campaign in reference to religious institutions that raises concerns?" the governor said.
Hutchinson added that although both candidates are flawed, he's focusing on the economy, fighting terrorism and the future of the Supreme Court, which has been one justice short for several months.
Trump reaction
Trump threatened Wednesday night to sue The New York Times for libel in response to its article, which featured two women accusing him of touching them inappropriately years ago. On Thursday, the newspaper defended its reporting and told Trump's lawyer that "we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight."
Trump told the Times that the allegations of the two women were false, and his lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, demanded that the newspaper retract the story and issue an apology.
"Your article is reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se," Kasowitz wrote. "It is apparent from, among other things, the timing of the article, that it is nothing more than a politically motivated effort to defeat Mr. Trump's candidacy."
Trump also took to Twitter to deny the allegations.
"The phoney story in the failing nytimes is a TOTAL FABRICATION. Written by same people as last discredited story on woman. WATCH!" Trump wrote on Twitter. He later corrected his spelling of "phony."
Eileen Murphy, a spokesman for the Times, said in a statement Thursday, "We stand by the story, which falls clearly into the realm of public service journalism."
David McCraw, vice president and assistant general counsel at the Times, followed up in a letter to Kasowitz and said that the article would not be retracted.
"The women quoted in our story spoke out on an issue of national importance -- indeed, an issue that Mr. Trump himself discussed with the whole nation watching during Sunday night's presidential debate," McCraw wrote. "It would have been a disservice not just to our readers but to democracy itself to silence their voices."
McCraw also made the case that the crux of a libel claim is that a person's reputation has been damaged. However, Trump has repeatedly boasted in public about his "non-consensual sexual touching of women," McCraw said.
Kasowitz -- in his letter, which was addressed to Times executive editor Dean Baquet -- said the Times' article was not properly investigated, and included false and malicious allegations. A failure to retract the story, he wrote, "will leave my client with no option but to pursue all available actions and remedies."
McCraw responded that the Times did what the law allows in publishing the story and that if Trump thinks that people who criticize them should be silenced, he would be happy to take the matter to court.
Other allegations
The Times spoke to people close to the women it interviewed, who verified that the women had told them the stories about what they say happened months or years ago.
Jessica Leeds, 74, told The Times that she sat beside Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York when she was 38. She said she didn't know him. Leeds said Trump groped her and tried to reach up her skirt. "His hands were everywhere," she said.
Rachel Crooks, who was at the time a 22-year-old receptionist at a real estate company in Trump Tower, said she came face to face with Trump outside an elevator in the building in 2005. He was recently married to his current wife, Melania, at the time.
Crooks said that after she introduced herself to him and they shook hands, he would not let go. Then he kissed her cheeks and "kissed me directly on the mouth," the Times quoted her as saying.
"I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that," she said.
Neither Crooks nor Leeds reported their Trump encounters to authorities. But the Times quoted Leeds' neighbor, and Crooks' sister and boyfriend at the time, as saying that each of the women had told them about their encounters with Trump shortly after they allegedly occurred.
Leeds and Crooks say they support Clinton for president, according to the Times.
Also, Mindy McGillivray, 36, told The Palm Beach Post that Trump groped her at the Mar-a-Lago estate in 2003 when she was there accompanying a photographer friend who was taking pictures at a Ray Charles concert.
"All of a sudden I felt a grab, a little nudge. I think it's Ken's camera bag, that was my first instinct. I turn around and there's Donald. He sort of looked away quickly. I quickly turned back, facing Ray Charles, and I'm stunned," she said.
"Ken" is Ken Davidoff, the photographer, with whom the newspaper also spoke. Davidoff said he did not witness the alleged incident but recalled that McGillivray told him about it right after it happened.
Natasha Stoynoff, the People reporter who wrote that she went to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump and Melania Trump for a feature story about their first wedding anniversary, said Trump kissed her without her consent when they were alone in a room.
"I turned around, and within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat," Stoynoff wrote.
She wrote that he told her later, "You know we're going to have an affair, don't you?"
The story also said the writer and Melania Trump later ran into each other in New York and had a conversation. Lawyers for the Republican nominee's wife say no such encounter occurred.
Melania Trump has threatened to sue, demanding that People magazine retract and apologize for Stoynoff's story.
Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Jonathan Lemire, Michael Casey, Brian Slodysko, Ken Thomas and Jack Gillum of The Associated Press; by Alan Rappeport of The New York Times; and by Jose DelReal and Sean Sullivan of The Washington Post.
A Section on 10/14/2016