Trump blasts New York Times over ‘lame hit piece they did on me and women’

Donald Trump poses with Miss USA competitors in Las Vegas in 2013. (Photo: Miss Universe Organization/AP)

Donald Trump is firing back at the New York Times over a front-page story that alleges the presumptive Republican presidential nominee made “unwelcome advances” toward women over the past four decades.

“Everyone is laughing at the @nytimes for the lame hit piece they did on me and women,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning, adding that he provided the newspaper with “many names of women I helped,” which he said the Times “refused to use.”

But Michael Barbaro — one of the reporters who worked on the 5,000-word story titled “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private” — rejected real estate mogul’s assertion.

“A factually inaccurate tweet,” Barbaro wrote on Twitter. “We did interview and quote women his office suggested in the story.”

The Times said its reporters interviewed dozens of women who had worked with or for Trump “in the worlds of real estate, modeling and pageants,” including “women who had dated him or interacted with him socially” as well as people “who had closely observed his conduct since his adolescence.”

The front page of Sunday’s New York Times. (NYT via Newseum.org)

“In all, more than 50 interviews were conducted over the course of six weeks,” the Times said, revealing Trump’s “unending commentary on the female form, a shrewd reliance on ambitious women, and unsettling workplace conduct.”

Trump complained that the newspaper was unfairly targeting him while leaving Hillary Clinton’s conduct during Bill Clinton’s sex-scandal-plagued presidency alone.

“Why doesn’t the failing @nytimes write the real story on the Clintons and women?” he tweeted. “The media is TOTALLY dishonest!”

Many of the women’s accounts, though, were relayed by the Times in their own words — like this one from Rowanne Brewer Lane, a former girlfriend who described meeting him at a party at his Palm Beach, Fla., estate:

“I went into the bathroom and tried one on,” Brewer Lane continued. “I came out, and he said, ‘Wow.’”

Trump, “then 44 and in the midst of his first divorce, decided to show her off to the crowd at Mar-a-Lago,” according to the Times.

“He brought me out to the pool and said, ‘That is a stunning Trump girl, isn’t it?’” Brewer Lane recounted to the Times.

Trump disputed her recollection.

“A lot of things get made up over the years,” he told the Times. “I have always treated women with great respect. And women will tell you that.”

On ABC’s “This Week,” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said Trump “is going to have to answer for” his relationship with women, but suggested any trouble Trump had in his personal life is a thing of the past.

“There are things from many years ago and I think that, you know, as Christians, judging each other I think is problematic,” Preibus said. “It’s not necessarily that people make mistakes or have regrets or seek forgiveness; it’s whether or not the person launching the charge is authentic in their own life and can actually be pure enough to make such a charge. That’s what I think most people can look at when they evaluate people’s character.

Priebus continued: “I don’t think Donald Trump is being judged based on his personal life. I think people are judging Donald Trump as to whether or not he’s someone that’s going to go to Washington and shake things up. And that’s why he’s doing so well.”

“All these stories that come out — and they come out every couple weeks — people just don’t care,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think people look at Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and say, ‘Who’s going to bring an earthquake to D.C.?’”

Trump continued rail against the Times via his Twitter account later Sunday.