McGillivray's comments came as the accusations against Trump — by more than a dozen women in the final weeks of the presidential campaign last year — have gained newfound attention amid the #MeToo movement sweeping across the country. She spoke a day after three other women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct appeared together on the show and at a news conference, renewing their allegations against the president and calling on Congress to investigate their claims.

“Let's try round two,” Samantha Holvey said Monday on NBC. The former Miss USA contestant said in October 2016 that Trump inappropriately inspected pageant participants. “The environment's different; let's try again.”

AD

AD

Trump has denied the women's allegation, writing Tuesday morning on Twitter that “the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met” are more of what he describes as “fake news.”

It was unclear if Trump was referring only to the women who went on television Monday or all of the women who have accused him — a list that includes a former contestant on his “Apprentice” TV show, a former business partner and a People magazine reporter who interviewed him.

On Tuesday afternoon, McGillivray and three of Trump's accusers issued a statement attacking his denials and again called for an outside investigation.

"If President Trump is so confident about his claims, he should also support a move to investigate and air the facts," they said. "The post-Weinstein era of accountability, and the rise of the #MeToo movement, give us hope that our society is changing for the better. President Trump has thus far avoided accountability for his long-running sexual misconduct. That changes now."

AD

AD

The White House's position is that Trump's accusers are all lying. In a statement Monday, the White House called the accusations “false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts,” and said they were addressed when Trump won the presidential election.

“The American people knew this and voted for the president and we feel like we're ready to move forward,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Monday of the accusations.

When asked for a list of the eyewitness accounts disputing the allegations from Trump's accusers, the White House pointed to rebuttals that have been made public since the presidential campaign and said it would not be providing new witnesses for comment.

AD

In a statement on Tuesday, the White House dismissed McGillivray's comments on NBC as well as Brave New Films, a nonprofit group that promotes activism around liberal causes through short documentaries and organized the news conference a day earlier with some of Trump's other accusers.

AD

“This is a false and absurd claim by another disappointed Hillary Clinton supporter who has absolutely no credibility and has continued to peddle meritless allegations," the White House said. "This is nothing more than a publicity stunt by a film studio backed by liberal interest groups intent on lobbing politically motivated attacks against American voters."

McGillivray, speaking to The Washington Post earlier this year, said she voted for Clinton in last year's presidential race, though she described her viewpoints as a combination of Democratic and Republican beliefs.

McGillivray, 38, first shared her story publicly last year, telling the Palm Beach Post that she was motivated to speak out when Trump — who had been heard on a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape released a few days earlier bragging about grabbing women by the genitals — denied at a presidential debate that he had ever done anything like that.

AD

AD

Ken Davidoff, the photographer who was with McGillivray at Mar-a-Lago, told the newspaper that he remembered McGillivray telling him about the incident right after it happened.

Speaking on NBC, McGillivray said she was “scared, intimidated, hurt” by what happened, saying that Trump and others must be held accountable. “We've got to have higher standards in this country, and we need to hold these people very accountable,” McGillivray said. “And he has to face the music. He can't get away with this.”

In an interview with The Washington Post earlier this year, McGillivray said she's angry that Trump ascended to the Oval Office not long after she and other women accused him of sexual misconduct. “What pisses me off is that the guy is president,” McGillivray, who lives not far from Mar-a-Lago, said at the time. “It's that simple.”

AD

AD

McGillivray and other Trump accusers have questioned why allegations of sexual misconduct felled Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and other men but did nothing to stop Trump from winning the presidency.

For her part, McGillivray wondered if it mattered that some of the women who spoke out against Weinstein — and helped launch the #MeToo movement that has affected industry after industry — were celebrities.

“We certainly didn't have the notoriety that celebrities have,” McGillivray said of Trump's accusers. “Were they listening as loud and clear as they were with celebrities? Probably not. But I think it's important to hear the voices of victims who have had a similar case.”

This story has been updated since it was first published.