William Cummings

USA TODAY

It already looks like the 2016 general election is going to take the concept of negative campaigning to new heights. During an interview with Sean Hannity Wednesday, Donald Trump brought up an unproven accusation of a nearly 40-year-old sexual assault against former president Bill Clinton.

Trump's comment came after Hannity accused The New York Times of bias in the wake of the paper's story about Trump's relationships with women from his past.

"I looked at The New York Times. Are they going to interview Juanita Broaddrick? Are they going to interview Paula Jones? Are they going to interview Kathleen Willey?" Hannity asked. "In one case, it's about exposure. In another case it's about groping and fondling and touching against a woman's will."

"And rape," Trump said.

Trump is referring to Broaddrick's 1999 accusation that Clinton raped her in Little Rock, Ark. during his 1978 campaign for governor of the state.

Broaddrick repeated the accusation on social media in January.

Clinton's attorney called the allegations "absolutely false" in a statement in 1999, according to The Washington Post. In 1998, Broaddrick, a nursing home administrator, called the charges "untrue" in a sworn affidavit, which she later disavowed. No charges were ever brought in the case.

The presumptive GOP nominee has repeatedly pointed to Bill Clinton's sex scandals when confronted with his own charges of sexism and inappropriate behavior.

He has also called his likely Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, an "enabler" of her husband, whom he says "abused women more than any man that we know of in the history of politics," during a May 8 campaign rally in Spokane, Wash.

"She's married to a man who hurt many women," Trump said. "Hillary hurt many women, the women that he abused."

Mountains of mud set to fly in White House race

But Trump didn't always feel that way. He had previously praised the former president and said he had been treated unfairly.

“I think Bill Clinton has done a terrific job. I don't think he's been treated very fairly,” Trump told CNN’s Robert Novak in 1997

“This guy has got to be the toughest guy to take the kind of abuse that he has taken. Can you imagine going home to Hillary on a nightly basis with the kinds of things being said?” Trump said in 1997 on CNN’s Larry King Live.

On Thursday Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill weighed in on the allegations.

"Trump is doing what he does best, attacking when he feels wounded and dragging the American people through the mud for his own gain," Merrill said in a statement. "It’s not surprising that after a week of still refusing to release his taxes and likening Oakland and Ferguson to the dangers in Iraq, of course he wants to change the subject. So while he licks his wounds, we'll continue to focus on improving the lives of the American people."