WASHINGTON — Donald Trump fired off an erratic new broadside at Hillary Clinton on Sunday, making more explosive claims that American media and a conspiracy to commit voter fraud are rigging the presidential election against him.
Amid the latest Twitter blasts from the Republican White House nominee, his running mate Mike Pence sought to lower tensions by insisting his camp would accept defeat if that’s what voters decide on Nov. 8.
Two polls out on Sunday — and carried out in time to gauge voter reaction to the slew of sexual misconduct allegations against Trump that emerged last week — put Clinton ahead.
But they did so by vastly different numbers: an ABC News/Washington Post survey had Clinton four points ahead while an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll put her margin at 11 points.
Trump, in a long stream of tweets on Sunday, said repeatedly that US media are rigging the election by hammering away at what he calls fabricated accounts of him making unwanted sexual advances on women.
Trump has denied those allegations, which burst into the race last week in a steady, damaging stream. “Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election!” Trump wrote.
In another tweet, he suggested — without offering evidence — that voter fraud will be a problem on election day.
“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD,” he said.
Trump has been insisting for months that the election is rigged — and has repeated the charge like a mantra since Clinton started to pull away in the polls a few weeks ago.
“He is swinging at every phantom of his own imagination because he knows he’s losing,” Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine told ABC on Sunday.
Trump’s assertions have been criticized as dangerous as it seems to raise the prospect of his supporters lashing out if he loses.
After the first debate Trump said he would respect the election result. But he backtracked in an interview with the New York Times last month, saying, “We’re going to see what happens.”
The nation’s top elected Republican, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has declared that he would no longer “defend” the party’s nominee, rebuked Trump over his comments questioning the validity of the election process.
“Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,” his spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement.
Clinton is lying low, with the apparent strategy of letting Trump self-destruct.
But these are also delicate times for Clinton. As sexual misconduct claims against Trump dominate the campaign, is it hard for Clinton to speak out because she stayed beside her husband Bill even as he was mired in the Monica Lewinsky and other sex scandals, humiliating her on his way to being impeached.
But there is no question the race is shifting in her favor.
The CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll out Sunday found that, because of a surge in support for Clinton among women, she now leads by six points in a dozen crucial swing states. — AFP
