Donald Trump Goes After Carlos Slim For Alleged Smear Campaign

It seems Donald Trump will spare no one when it comes to pointing out who’s behind the supposed conspiracy to keep him out of the White House. As of right now, Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire, is his target.

Trump’s campaign is coming undone due to a number of scandals that have been derailing his run for the presidency.

Just last week, a video surfaced featuring Donald Trump and former Access Hollywood correspondent, Billy Bush, discussing the former’s sexual advances towards women. The video showed Trump bragging to Bush that he can get away with kissing women without the latter’s consent saying that when one is a celebrity, one can easily get away with such behavior.

After that several women have come forward alleging that the Republican candidate made inappropriate advances towards them. One woman, Jessica Leeds, said that Trump groped her while they were flying first class. While on a business trip over 30 years ago, Leeds found herself seating next to Donald Trump when a kind flight attendant asked her if she wanted to fly in first class.

Grateful for the upgrade, Leeds took up the offer but regretted it instantly when Trump made several inappropriate advances on her.

Leeds referred to Trump as an “octopus” saying that his hands were all over her, which was clearly unnerving. Terrified by the incident, Leeds left first class and headed back to her original seat in coach.

Leeds spoke to a few friends about her incident with Donald Trump but kept silent about it until now. When she saw Trump deny that he made inappropriate advances towards women during the second presidential debate she became furious.

“I wanted to punch the screen,” she told a reporter.

The New York Times was the first media outlet to publish the allegations and Trump quickly set his sights on the publication.

Trump denied the allegations and threatened to sue the newspaper for libel. According to his lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, Trump demanded that the publication retract the article and issue an apology.

But The New York Times stood its ground and offered Donald Trump nothing of the sort, saying that they have every right to publish the article. Eileen Murphy, The New York Times‘ spokesperson, countered Trump’s threat of a lawsuit with a statement.

“We stand by the story, which falls clearly into the realm of public service journalism.”

Now that he’s clearly losing to Hillary Clinton in the polls, Trump became more aggressive and started accusing Mexican entrepreneur Carlos Slim of working with Clinton in trying to bring him down.

Carlos Slim is the chairman and CEO of Telmex and América Móvil, telecommunication companies that provide mobile phone services to Latin America. In 2008, he became one of the shareholders of The New York Times when the publication was suffering huge financial losses due to the recession.

According to NBC News, Slim owns 17 percent of The New York Times‘ shares and his several donations to the Clinton Foundation provided Trump the link he was looking for. He accused the newspaper’s reporters of not being journalists but Clinton and Carlos Slim’s aides in smearing his image.

Trump persistently denies the allegations being hurled at him, and he said that they were all false and mere propaganda to prevent him from winning the election. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump is accusing Slim of helping Clinton win the presidency by using The New York Times to wage a smear campaign against him.

But according to Slim’s spokesperson Arturo Elias, Trump’s accusations are baseless seeing that the Mexican billionaire has never interfered with politics in his own country much less in the United States of America.

The New York Times also countered Donald Trump’s remarks saying that Mr. Carlos Slim has no influence on their company and has never tried to coerce them to publish any article for political gain.

[Featured Image by Evan Vucci/AP Images]