Trump’s sexual misconduct accusers: ‘Now let’s try Round 2’
WASHINGTON — Several women who accused President Trump of sexual misconduct are telling their stories again, saying “the environment is different” than it was when they went public during the presidential campaign last year.
Three of the women — Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey and Rachel Crooks — spoke to NBC’s Megyn Kelly on Monday and said they hoped that Trump will face a reckoning amid the cultural shift.
“For us to put ourselves out there to try to show America who this man is and especially how he views women and for them to say, ‘Eh, we don’t care,’ it hurt,” Trump accuser Holvey said of Trump’s election.
“Now let’s try Round 2. The environment is different.”
The 2006 Miss North Carolina said Trump came into the women’s-only backstage area during a Miss USA pageant event to inspect the contestants in their robes. “He comes in like he owns the place,” Holvey said. “Like he owns you.”
The three women are in a new film called “16 Women and Donald Trump.”
They are calling for a congressional investigation into Trump’s conduct — much like the probes launched into Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Trent Franks, who recently resigned over sexual harassment allegations.
Trump has said all the women are lying and the White House also said Monday the women’s stories are not true.
“These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory,” the White House said in a statement.
Crooks, who worked in Trump Tower, said Trump kissed her near the elevators in 2005 the first day she met him. “He held onto my hand and he kept kissing me,” Crooks said.
Leeds, who worked as a traveling saleswoman, said Trump was her seatmate on a flight nearly 40 years ago when he groped her and put his hands up her skirt.
“He’s all over me. Kissing and groping and groping and kissing,” Leeds said. “…But when his hands starting going up my skirt — I’m not a small person — I managed to wiggle out and stand up, grab my purse and I went to the back of the airplane.
“I stayed in the back of the airplane until we landed and everybody was off because I did not want to take the chance of running into him.”
Leeds said she ran into Trump years later at a New York charity event and he recognized her: “You were that c–t from the airplane,” Leeds said Trump said to her.
With the fall of powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and others, the Trump accusers said they believe there’s been a cultural shift. Two of the women — Leeds and Crooks — acknowledged they are Democrats but said their decision to retell their stories is not politically motivated.
Crooks said the Trump tales span many states and years, yet all remain “eerily similar.”
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to come into the spotlight about this,” Crooks said. “Seriously, I would much rather be of public interest for something great I accomplished, not something negative that’s happened to me.”