The Republican presidential candidate was supposed to get away from the controversy. After weeks of scandal after scandal, Donald Trump was meant to focus on policy. His Saturday address in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was billed as the chance for Trump to show why voters should choose him over Hillary Clinton. The speech would “set the tone” for the final weeks of the campaign as Trump would make the case for why he is “the change-agent our country needs,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s national policy director said before the speech.

Right at the beginning of the address though, Trump seemingly couldn’t help himself and mentioned all the women who have come forward to accuse him of sexual assault, straight up calling them liars and vowing to take them to court.

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. Total fabrication, the events never happened—never,” he said. “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

That means Trump is vowing to file at least 10 lawsuits against women who have accused him of wrongdoing, regardless of whether he wins the election.

Trump had a larger point, telling voters that the way these allegations have spread and multiplied shows how much the “elites” want him to lose. “But a simple phone call placed to the biggest newspapers or television networks gets them wall-to-wall coverage with virtually no fact-checking whatsoever,” Trump, whose campaign argued vigorously against fact-checking during the debates, said.

And Trump isn’t asking voters to feel sorry for him, but just to think about the implications in their own nonbillionaire lives. “If they can fight somebody like me who has unlimited resources to fight back just look at what they can do to you, your jobs, your security, your education, your health care, the violation of religious liberty the theft of the Second Amendment,” Trump said. “Look at what they’ve done to you with your jobs.”

He characterized these stories as only one example of how the “corrupt” media are trying to keep him out of the White House and do everything possible to make him “look as bad and dangerous as possible.”



Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.