Yet another woman has spoken out with a story of an assault by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In today’s Washington Post, reporter Karen Tumulty shares the story of Kristin Anderson, who says Trump groped her at a Manhattan nightclub in the early 1990s.
‘I Don’t Know Why He Did It’
Kristin Anderson was living in New York City in the early 1990s, trying to launch a modeling career. On the night of the alleged incident, she was at a nightclub, talking with her companions. The Post reports:
“… [She] did not notice the figure to her right on a red velvet couch — until, she recalls, his fingers slid under her miniskirt, moved up her inner thigh, and touched her vagina through her underwear.”
Considering what we all heard Trump say, in his own words, to Billy Bush in the 2005 Access Hollywood video, this sounds exactly like something he might do.
After she felt the hand touch her:
“Anderson shoved the hand away, fled the couch and turned to take her first good look at the man who had touched her.
She recognized him as Donald Trump: ‘He was so distinctive looking — with the hair and the eyebrows. I mean, nobody else has those eyebrows.'”
This is starting to sound like Trump’s standard operating procedure. In just the past two days, we’ve covered several different incidents in which women have reported everything from wildly inappropriate behavior to downright assault — all allegedly perpetrated by Donald Trump.
Anderson said:
“I don’t know why he did it. It was like just to prove that he could do it, and nothing would happen.”
Perhaps because, as Trump himself said to Billy Bush, because he thinks women just “let him” do it.
She Was Hesitant To Come Forward Until This Week
Kristin Anderson did not come to the Washington Post to tell her story. According to writer Karen Tumulty, speaking on MSNBC this afternoon (the following has been transcribed from a live broadcast at 1:30p.m. EDT):
“She did not come to the Washington Post. We heard about her story through a third party. We approached her, and she really hesitated. But when she saw the video tape that came out last Friday, where she heard Donald Trump openly bragging about how he was entitled to grope women’s genitals because he was a celebrity, she suddenly said to herself, ‘Now I finally understand why this happened to me.'”
Despite telling the anchorwoman that Anderson did not come to the Post to tell her story, Tumulty had to repeat the point that she didn’t want to speak out at first.
“She was not enthusiastic at the beginning about coming out and telling her story publicly, but — especially, a couple of nights ago, having read the accounts in the New York Times of two women who said they were groped by Donald Trump, of a People magazine reporter who wrote about being forcibly kissed by Donald Trump — Kristin said, ‘Look, what happened to me was over with in just a few seconds. But that kind of action is sort of a gateway to more serious stuff.’ And she said, ‘I really feel like I need to have these other women’s backs. That anybody who has been the subject of improper touching needs to speak out about it.”
Tumulty was then asked, again, if Anderson came to speak to the Washington Post. She stated, again, that it was a third party who talked to the Post, and that they printed the story after speaking with Anderson over the course of several days and attempting to verify her story.
As far as her story having a political motive? Anderson says she doesn’t like either of the two major party candidates, and is considering writing in Mitt Romney.
Watch Kristin Anderson tell her story here:
Featured Image via screenshot from Washington Post video
