3 weeks ago
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Two women who accuse former President Trump of sexual assault recounted their experiences in a pair of political ads urging voters not to elect the former president to a second term in office.
The $250,000 ad campaign, which conservative lawyer George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC announced on Wednesday, features two 60-second ad spots, with former saleswoman and stockbroker Jessica Leeds telling her story in one and former People Magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff sharing hers in another.
The ads will run in Pennsylvania through Election Day, the PAC said, and will target women on the Hallmark and Lifetime channels. The ad campaign will also target Republicans and independents on streaming platforms.
The push is part of a larger $500,000 national campaign “to tell the women’s stories and remind swing voters about Trump’s deficient character,” according to a press release.
In the first ad, Leeds recounts a 1979 incident on a flight when she said she was approached by a stewardess shortly before take off, inviting her to follow her to First Class. Leeds obliged and, in the window seat, she found Trump, who introduced himself to her, she recalled.
“The airplane took off and, all of a sudden, Donald Trump started groping me,” Leeds recounted. “He was trying to kiss me, and I'm trying to push him away. He was basically overpowering me.”
“When he started putting his hand up my skirt, I got out of the seat, grabbed my purse and went back to my original seat, and I certainly was shook up by the whole thing,” she continued.
Two years later, Leeds said, she ran into Trump and his wife at a fundraiser.
"He looked at me, and he said, ‘I remember you. You're that c--- from the airplane,'" Leeds recounted in the ad.
“Donald Trump views women as for his entertainment,” Leeds added. “He is a serial predator. He has said it point blank, and he's done it, and he will continue to do it.”
In the second ad, Stoynoff describes traveling to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump for People Magazine in 2005. Trump’s wife at the time, former First Lady Melania Trump, went upstairs to change, Stoynoff recalled, and Trump told Stoynoff he wanted to show her “this beautiful painting, this beautiful room.”
“He leads me to this room, pushes me against the wall, and starts kissing me forcefully,” Stoynoff recalled in the video.
“I tried to push him. He kept coming back at me. I was in shock and smothered, and he had his hands here against my shoulders,” Stoynoff said, bringing her hands to reach her shoulders. “I felt sick inside. I felt horrified.”
The butler then entered the room, Stoynoff said, and Trump turned to her and said, “You know we're going have an affair, don't you?” At that point, “Melania was approaching. I was horrified,” she added.
For years, Stoynoff said, she blamed herself for the incident. That changed when the Access Hollywood tape came out in 2016, capturing Trump allegedly boasting about reaching a level of stardom allowing him to grab women by their genitals.
“I realized I was not to blame, that he was just a predator of women,” Stoynoff said in the ad. “What could have happened if the butler had not come into the room? Donald Trump is an adjudicated sexual assaulter. We cannot elect this man as president."
Stoynoff said her view also changed when listening to stories from women like fellow journalist E. Jean Carroll, who brought a successful lawsuit against the former president, alleging he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman’s dressing room in the ‘90s. Both Stoynoff and Leeds testified in that trial, in an effort to show a pattern of sexual assault.
Trump was ultimately found liable for sexual assault and defamation, and was ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars by a New York jury. Trump denies the accusations and is appealing both cases.
The Anti-Psychopath PAC press release noted the ad campaign in Pennsylvania comes just days after former President Trump on Monday told women “I am your protector,” at a rally in Pennsylvania.
The goal of the ad campaign, according to the PAC, is twofold: “First, it amplifies the traumatic stories for undecided voters across the country and reminds them a vote for Trump is a vote for a serial sexual predator. Second, it will provoke the former president by confronting him with the effects of his actions, and the lives he upended as a result.”
Conway, who has become one of the most prominent conservative voices against Trump in recent years, applauded Stoynoff and Leeds, for sharing their stories.
“Sometimes the truth takes decades to fully come out,” Conway said in a statement. “Natasha, Jessica, and so many more brave women like them have long been telling us who Donald Trump really is — a malignant narcissist who abuses other human beings the way everyone else breathes."
“It’s time for Pennsylvania voters to listen to them, and to put his destructive foray into public life to an end,” he continued.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the ad campaign.
Updated at 1:00 p.m. EDT
English (US) ·