It was the week when the wheels truly fell off Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Still reeling from the release of a tape in which he is heard making lewd and sexually suggestive comments about women, Trump watched as a parade of accusers emerged last week, each telling a similar story: He had tried to grope, grab or kiss them sometime over the past three decades.
Trump has categorically denied each and every one of the charges. But his promised “evidence” to dispute the claims amounted to a single statement from a cousin of Summer Zervos, a contestant on “The Apprentice” who alleged that Trump kissed and groped her. And he made things worse by insisting in campaign speeches that he could never have groped the women he is accused of groping because, well, they simply aren’t attractive enough.
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The allegations of groping seemed to send Trump off into an even-less-disciplined stage of his campaign, which, at this point, is barely lurching its way to the finish line. Trump spent the week alleging a global conspiracy against him and his supporters, a conspiracy that virtually everyone — Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the media, corporations — was in on.
And he repeatedly insisted that the entire election was rigged, the outcome predetermined by forces dead set on keeping him from the White House.
Along the way, Trump also suggested that Clinton might have been on drugs in the second debate, disassembled a malfunctioning teleprompter on stage and veered wildly off message time and time and time again.
With every passing minute, Trump watched his base grow ever more committed to him while pushing away the loosely affiliated Republican voters and independents he so badly needs if he wants to have a real shot at beating Clinton. That prospect looks increasingly dim, and what’s worse for Republicans is that Trump doesn’t even seem to care.
Donald Trump, for taking the shackles off, you had the Worst Week in Washington. Congrats, or something