Donald Trump on Friday accused Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, a part-owner of The New York Times and a six-figure donor to the Clinton Foundation, of being a meddling foreign bogeymen behind the troubling sexual harassment and assault accusations that have emerged this week.

During a mid-afternoon campaign rally in North Carolina, the Republican presidential nominee said the Times is out to get him, and cast Slim as the unseen hand pulling the strings of 'corporate lobbyists' masquerading as reporters.

'The largest shareholder in the Times is Carlos Slim. Now Carlos Slim, as you know, comes from Mexico,' Trump said. 'He's given many millions of dollars to the Clintons and their initiatives.'

Trump mentioned Slim's nationality twice, as if to underscore Mexico's adversarial posture toward his pledge to wall off America from its neighbor to the south.

BOGEYMAN: Donald Trump reportedly is preparing to accuse Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecom billionaire who also contributes to the Clinton Foundation and is The New York Times' largest shareholder, of being behind sex-abuse accusations from a series of women

J'ACCUSE: Trump said Friday in North Carolina that Slim is the puppeteer driving The Times to attack him in order to protect the Mexican billionaire's economic interests

'So Carlos Slim, largest donor of the paper, from Mexico,' he said.

At that second prompting, a handful of Trump's supporters started chanting a new slogan – a take-off on one usually reserved for their hero's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

'Lock him up! Lock him up!' they screamed, laughing afterward at their own cleverness.

Trump, too, unveiled some fresh material, a new jab at the newspaper he loves to hate.

'Reporters at the New York Times, they're not journalists,' he charged. 'They're corporate lobbyists for Carlos Slim and for Hillary Clinton.'

'We're going to let foreign corporations and their CEOs decide the outcomes? You just can't do this. We can't let this happen.'

HISTORY: Trump has tangled with Slim before, when the Mexican's TV production company killed a joint venture following his presidential campaign launch

The suggesting Trump has let fly under his audience's radar is that Slim and other foreigners could try to influence the U.S. election in a way that benefits their economic interests.

In Slim's case, that could mean blocking Trump from winning the White House out of fear that he would follow through on his promises to build a wall and impose tough import tariffs on companies that move to Mexico for cheaper labor.

Trump himself as been accused of capitalizing on foreign influences, with the Clinton campaign alleging an unproven cozy relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and intimating that Moscow is behind this month's 'Wikileaks' dump of emails hacked from Clinton's campaign chairman.

Trump has blamed 'corrupt media' for his slide in national polls, and said Friday that news outlets are 'trying to do everything in their power to stop our movement.'

And 'no paper is more corrupt than the failing New York Times,' he said.

'They are really, really bad people.'

DIDN'T HAPPEN? Trump has maintained his innocence as the list of sexual misconduct allegations grows

The Times has made itself a ripe target. It published a damning story advancing the claims of two women who say the real estate tycoon sexually touched and kissed them without their consent.

The reporters behind that piece also wrote a lengthy take-down of the Republican six months ago featuring take-down testimonials from a handful of women – some of whom disagreed with how they were quoted and portrayed.

Trump threatened on both Wednesday and Thursday that he would sue the Times for libel. The newspaper's editors responded by defending the work as public-interest journalism and said they 'welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.'

The Wall Street Journal first reported late Thursday that Trump planned to claim Slim cooked up a raft of negative press in order to derail his candidacy.

Together with his family, Slim, a wealthy telecommunications entrepreneur, owns about 17 per cent of the Times. He and his foundation have contributed between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

The Journal reached Slim spokesman Arturo Elias Ayub, the billionaire's son-in-law, who called allegations of his boss's involvement in a political plot 'totally false.'

'Of course we aren't interfering in the U.S. election. We aren't even active in Mexican politics,' said Elias.

But a Trump adviser suggested that wrapping Slim and the Times into a single political wedge could allow the Republican to claim that the elite newspaper is 'failing' in a new populist age while also bashing it for needing a 'rescue' form a foreign investor.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the Times, told the Journal that 'Carlos Slim is an excellent shareholder who fully respects boundaries regarding the independence of our journalism. He has never sought to influence what we report.'

And Hillary Clinton's campaign laughed off the idea that it's conspiring with an already friendly newspaper to bury Trump in what Mrs. Clinton once called 'bimbo eruptions' when they applied to her own husband.

Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon said Thursday that the notion 'is just another deranged right-wing conspiracy theory from Donald Trump's increasingly desperate campaign.'

But Trump has insisted that there's something afoot with his female accusers that doesn't pass the political smell-test.

'These attacks are orchestrated by the Clintons and their media allies,' he claimed Thursday during a speech in West Palm Beach, Florida.

'The only thing Hillary Clinton has going for herself is the press,' he said. 'What they say is false and slanderous in virtually every respect.'

Trump also jabbed at the Times, saying it was 'fighting desperately for its relevance and financial survival' as it peddles 'slander and libels' with help from 'the Clinton machine.'

The GOP nominee has a history of tangling with Slim.

Shortly after Trump launched his presidential campaign, the Mexican mogul's production company, Ora TV, canceled a joint venture with him.

The company cited Trump's comments that the Mexican government was 'sending' criminals across the U.S. border, and that some illegal immigrants from that country were 'rapists' and 'murderers.'

Elias Ayub told Reuters at the time that Trump's statement was racist and 'totally out of line.'