GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Donald Trump continued to fight back Friday against sexual-assault accusations, acting out one woman's allegation onstage and suggesting another was not attractive enough to merit his attention.
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"She would not be my first choice, that I can tell you," Trump said of one woman in a criticism of his female accusers as he campaigned in North Carolina.
Even as he addressed the allegations, claims by two more women against Trump surfaced Friday.
At the campaign event, the New York businessman said his staff wanted him to avoid the topic altogether but that he couldn't stand by without defending himself. He blamed the growing story on his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and an international media conspiracy, describing his female accusers as "sick" people seeking fame or money.
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"The only thing I can say is hopefully, hopefully, our patriotic movement will overcome this terrible deception," he said.
Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, promised that the campaign would soon release evidence against the women that would show Trump's innocence.
"It's coming in, frankly, probably in a matter of hours," Pence said Friday morning on NBC's Today show. He added, "It's astonishing to see the enormous coverage of these, of these really unfounded allegations, unestablished allegations, compared to an avalanche of emails coming out of Hillary Clinton's years as secretary of state."
Indeed, Friday marked another day on which WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's personal account. The Clinton campaign, citing information it says is from the FBI, says the hacks are being investigated as part of a broader attack on Democratic Party leaders that may involve Russia.
Hours after her Republican rival defended himself against the allegations, Clinton spoke Friday of the need for national healing in a Seattle fundraising speech that also saw her call upon Americans to help her govern if she's elected president.
"This election is incredibly painful. I take absolutely no satisfaction in what is happening on the other side with my opponent," Clinton said while visiting a Seattle campaign field office. "I am not at all happy about that because it hurts our country, it hurts our democracy, it sends terrible messages to so many people here at home and around the world."
The Democratic presidential nominee said earlier at a Seattle fundraiser that while she understands many voters want to "turn away," her supporters need to help her win the election to "demonstrate the positive, optimistic, confident, unifying vision of America that I believe in and that I think, together, we can demonstrate America's best days are still ahead of us."
Early in-person voting is underway in 20 states, including Ohio, where President Barack Obama railed against Trump a day after first lady Michelle Obama said in a passionate speech, "Enough is enough."
The Obamas both seized on Trump's words, captured in a video released last week, bragging about kissing and groping women without their permission. The 70-year-old Republican has apologized, but also repeatedly dismissed his comments as "locker room talk."
"You don't have to be a husband or a father to know that that kind of language, those kinds of thoughts, those kinds of actions are unacceptable. They're not right. You just have to be a decent human being," President Obama said in Columbus, Ohio.
Obama also used the rally to try to debunk Trump's charge a day before that Clinton was at the center of a global conspiracy by wealthy elites and political bigwigs to rig the system against working people. Obama encouraged voters to judge candidates by "what they've been doing their whole lives."
"This is a guy who spent all his time hanging around, trying to convince everybody he was a global elite ... and flying around everywhere and all he had time for was celebrities," Obama said. "Suddenly he's going to be the champion of working people?"
This week, Obama entered the final 100 days of his presidency, and he's increasingly devoting his time to trying to push Clinton over the finish line. Obama warned that his legacy would falter if Trump is elected.
"I'm here to tell you that all that progress goes out the window if we don't make the right choice right now," Obama said.
New Allegations
Two more women, meanwhile, came forward Friday with allegations against Trump.
A former contestant from NBC's The Apprentice said Friday that the former reality-television star made advances at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007.
Summer Zervos, 41, appeared at a news conference Friday with Gloria Allred, a well-known Los Angeles attorney who has previously represented women who have accused celebrities of sexual misconduct. Zervos was a contestant on The Apprentice in 2006 and said she later contacted Trump to inquire about a job with one of his businesses.
Zervos said she had an initial meeting with Trump, where he discussed a potential job with her. When they parted, he kissed her on the lips and asked for her phone number, she said.
She said that weeks later Trump called to invite her to meet him at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she said she was expecting to have dinner with Trump. Instead, she described a series of unwanted kisses and touching by Trump, which she said she repeatedly rejected.
Zervos said Trump eventually stopped and began talking as if they were in a job interview. She said she was later offered a low-paying job at a Trump-owned golf course.
At the time, Trump had recently married his third and current wife, Melania Trump, and the couple had an infant son.
Zervos said she is a Republican and has no political agenda in coming forward. Allred said her client told her parents and others about the incident shortly after it occurred.
And in a story published online Friday, photographer Kristin Anderson told The Washington Post that she was sitting on a couch with friends at a New York nightclub in the early 1990s when a hand reached up her skirt and touched her through her underwear.
Anderson, then in her early 20s, said she pushed the hand away, turned around and recognized Trump as the man who had groped her. She said the episode lasted no more than 30 seconds.
Anderson told the Post that she and her companions were "very grossed out and weirded out" and thought, "OK, Donald is gross. We all know he's gross. Let's just move on."
The Post said it contacted Anderson after a friend she had told about the incident recounted it to a reporter. Other friends also told the Post that Anderson recounted the same story to them years ago.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday, Trump sought to discredit his accusers. He said because there were no witnesses to the interactions, the allegations were not credible.
"Right now I am being viciously attacked with lies and smears," Trump said at an outdoor amphitheater. "It's a phony deal. I have no idea who these women are."
Trump mocked Anderson's claim onstage, pausing to reach out his hand to touch an imaginary woman as his accuser described. "I just heard this one. It's like, it's like unbelievable," he said.
Friday's accusations against Trump come after similar allegations by women in articles by The New York Times and The Palm Beach Post. Separately, a People magazine reporter offered a first-person account accusing Trump of attacking her in 2005 while she was in Florida to interview him and his pregnant wife.
GOP Fundraising Slips
There was evidence that Trump's troubles were hurting the Republican Party's ability to raise money.
The Republican National Committee has raised about 25 percent less over the past three months than it did over the same period four years ago, when Mitt Romney was atop the ticket.
The RNC said Friday that it raised $39.4 million last month, compared with $48.4 million in September 2012. It said it has raised $262.3 million since January 2015, about $20 million more than it had by this time in 2012.
The RNC has transferred $6.35 million of its September haul to fund down-ballot races, according to a fundraising release.
Trump and RNC officials are part of a Joint Fundraising Committee, which raises money for the party and his campaign. But unlike previous cycles, the party's fundraising committees for Senate and House races are separate accounts and the Joint Fundraising Committee is not required to allocate funds.
The reallocation of $6.35 million -- $4.5 million of which went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and $1.85 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee -- was made "with the encouragement of the Trump campaign," the Republican National Committee's news release stated.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that "our supporters are enthusiastic about Donald Trump, and as a result this was one of the best months in RNC history for small dollar fundraising."
"With thousands of staffers and volunteers in the field right now, the amount we've raised this this month will continue to help deliver Republican victories at every level," Priebus said.
The Democratic National Committee has yet to release its fundraising numbers for September.
Ryan Slams Clinton
Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan delivered a speech in Madison, Wis., on Friday criticizing Clinton and promoting Republicans in next month's elections.
The nation's top elected Republican did not mention Trump by name in his speech.
Four days after privately telling House Republicans that he would no longer defend or campaign for his party's presidential nominee, Wisconsin's Ryan tore into Clinton and her supporters for pursuing a government-heavy agenda for elites. He said a GOP-run Congress would block at least parts of their plans.
He told the students that Democrats want to increase bureaucratic control of peoples' lives and confirm liberal judges and promised, "A Republican Congress will not stand for this."
Ryan said Clinton's "stronger together" slogan actually means, "We are stronger if we are all subject to the state. What she means is we are stronger if we give up our ties of responsibility to one another and hand all of that over to government."
He also pressed for the GOP agenda that he rolled out last summer that focuses on such issues as cutting regulations, overhauling the tax code and replacing Obama's health care law.
He also advised his audience, "Don't get into a personality contest, don't talk about the latest Twitter storm from somebody."
Ryan answered questions from the students -- who also did not use Trump's name -- but did not talk to reporters. Similarly, he delivered remarks Thursday to business people without taking questions afterward.
In recent weeks, many congressional Republicans have avoided using Trump's name, at times using phrases like "our party's nominee." Ryan never mentioned Trump during two brief campaign appearances for House candidates in Pennsylvania last week.
Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Jill Colvin, Josh Lederman, Julie Bykowicz, Hope Yen, Scott Bauer, Michael Biesecker, Michael R. Blood, Jill Colvin, Alan Fram and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press and by Kevin Cirilli of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/15/2016