One of Donald Trump’s sexual assault accusers assailed his claim this week that, if re-elected, he will be a “protector of women.”
“He is not a protector of women, he is a predator of women,” said Natasha Stoynoff, a former People magazine writer, in an appearance on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Wednesday.
Stoynoff has said that, in 2005, Trump pushed her against a wall and forced his tongue in her mouth while he was giving her a tour of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Stoyoff, who was there to interview him for an article, said he repeatedly told her, “We’re going to have an affair, I’m telling you.”
Trump’s campaign denied her allegations, first made publicly in 2016, and he tweeted, “it did not happen!” People later reported that six people corroborated on the record that Stoyoff told them about the alleged incident around the time she said it happened.
Trump has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior—including rape, sexual assault, and groping—by more than two dozen women. Last year, a jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, the journalist and advice columnist, in 1996 and awarded her a $5 million judgment—she was later awarded $83 million in an expanded defamation case.
Stoynoff told CNN on Wednesday that she has become friendly with some of Trump’s other accusers and that she shared his remarks about being a “protector of women” with them. “I feel like we had a universal vomit onto our phones,” she said.
She also said she laughed when she first saw the clip of Trump, echoing his former White House strategic communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, who also said she burst out laughing at his “creepy” and “infantilizing” remarks.
