Donald Trump’s Potential Guest at Debate: Gennifer Flowers
Donald Trump’s Potential Guest at Debate: Gennifer Flowers
Donald J. Trump threatened on Saturday to invite Gennifer Flowers, the woman whose claims of an affair with Bill Clinton imperiled his 1992 presidential campaign, to sit in the audience Monday night for Mr. Trump’sfirst debate with Hillary Clinton.
After Mr. Trump posted his threat on Twitter, Ms. Flowers said she would attend the debate, at Hofstra University on Long Island. “Yes I will be there,” she wrote in a text message to The New York Times.
It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump had actually invited her or whether she had simply interpreted his threat as an invitation. Neither she nor the Trump campaign would say whether she had been offered a ticket.
Mr. Trump’s Twitter post was directed at Mark Cuban, the attention-grabbing owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, who once hosted a short-lived reality television show, “The Benefactor,” that did not achieve the success of Mr. Trump’s “The Apprentice.”
Mr. Cuban, who frequently criticizes Mr. Trump and has recently found success on another reality show, “Shark Tank,” said on Thursday that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign had given him a front-row seat to Monday’s debate.
The thrice-married Mr. Trump, whose second marriage grew out of an affair during his first one, has repeatedly raised Mr. Clinton’s infidelities as a character attack against Mrs. Clinton. Several of Mr. Trump’s advisers have a long history of calling attention to Mr. Clinton’s scandals.
In 1992, Mr. Clinton denied Ms. Flowers’s claim of an affair, but years later, when asked in a deposition whether he had engaged in “sexual relations” with Ms. Flowers, he admitted having done so one time, in 1977. Ms. Flowers, in recently broadcast interviews, has accused Mrs. Clinton of being an “enabler” and has said the scandal is a relevant issue in 2016.
Each campaign receives tickets from the Commission on Presidential Debates to give to supporters at its discretion.
Campaigns often engage in psychological warfare when picking guests, as appeared to be the case with Mrs. Clinton’s choice of Mr. Cuban. But inviting a woman who had a sexual relationship with an opponent’s spouse would be in a different category.
If Mr. Trump does invite Ms. Flowers to be in the audience, he could also be taking a risk because he faces a potentially record-high gender gap with women, who might be troubled by such an aggressive and personal move.
Mrs. Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, said: “Hillary Clinton plans on using the debate to discuss the issues that make a difference in people’s lives. It’s not surprising that Donald Trump has chosen a different path.”
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