A former contestant on Donald Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice” spoke out on Friday to accuse the Republican presidential nominee of sexually harassing her when she sought career advice from him after her time on the show.

It was déjà vu all over again to see the champion of allegedly abused women, attorney Gloria Allred, make an appearance with one of Donald Trump’s molestation victims, Summer Zervos:

Summer Zervos, who laid out her allegations at a tearful press conference with attorney Gloria Allred on Friday, said Trump pursued unwanted sexual advances toward her when she met with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles to discuss employment opportunities in 2007. Zervos said she had first met Trump when she was a candidate on the fifth season of “The Apprentice,” which aired in 2006, and later reached out to him for career advice, with the hope of working for the Trump Organization.

We have seen it all before. It was Gloria Allred who showed up with a group of Herman Cain accusers in 2012 to similarly attempt to derail the presidential run of a powerful and successful Republican businessman:

The accusations against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from women claiming sexual assault aren't going away anytime soon and now, one of Hollywood's biggest legal names is getting involved. Attorney Gloria Allred, who represented women who accused Herman Cain of sexual infidelity in 2012, ending his presidential run, along with mistresses of professional golfer Tiger Woods, will hold a press conference with a new accuser today.

It doesn’t matter if the charges are false. Accusations make page one while the truth later winds up at the bottom of the classifieds. In the case of Cain, it derailed his campaign. In the case of Trump, his campaign wobbles while the mainstream media gladly changes the subject from Hillary Clinton’s record of failures and lies and her history of using her offices for self-enrichment while riding her husband’s stained coattails to political power.

In many ways the Trump “tale of the tape” and the bevy of women, some allegedly groped three decades earlier, is reminiscent of the campaign of smear and innuendo leveled at former GOP presidential candidate and successful African-American conservative businessman Herman Cain. Cain’s candidacy derailed after repeated and unproven sexual harassment allegations by former employees. But like Harry Reid’s tax lies about Mitt Romney, it worked.

It seems that powerful Republican outsiders, successful businessmen, threaten the Democrats hold on power, the liberal smear machine goes to work

This time, however, almost immediately the accusations against Donald Trump began unraveling, particularly the tall tale told by one Jessica Leeds of groping by the Donald in the first-class section of a transatlantic flight. The problem is that there were others on that flight, including one gentleman who portrayed Leeds as something between a groupie and a stalker who was rebuffed by Trump:

Donald Trump’s campaign says a British man is countering claims that the GOP presidential nominee groped a woman on a cross-country flight more than three decades ago. The man says he was sitting across from the accuser and contacted the Trump campaign because he was incensed by her account -- which is at odds with what he witnessed. “I have only met this accuser once and frankly cannot imagine why she is seeking to make out that Trump made sexual advances on her. Not only did he not do so (and I was present at all times) but it was she that was the one being flirtatious,” Anthony Gilberthorpe said in a note provided to The Post by the Trump campaign….

Some will say that Gilberthorpes’ account may be no more credible than Leeds’ accusation. But that’s the point. Leeds accusation was accepted as credible immediately. Smear first, prove later. Guilty until proven innocent. To various extents it worked with Romney and Cain, why not Trump? But the rush to believe Leeds’ claims of groping stand in the face of the blind eye to the claims of the likes of Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and others, claims backed up by contemporaneous witness testimony and a victorious lawsuit by and with a cash settlement to Jones.

Gloria Allred didn’t care about their more credible and documented claims. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized in 2011, righteous indignation and claims of victimhood are a one-way street for the liberal grievance industry:

The age of civility, like the era of post-racial politics, is a mirage created by liberals to mute criticism of their policies by committed conservatives. Otherwise, we wouldn't see the continued abuse heaped by liberals on women and minorities who dare to be conservative, members of the Tea Party or the GOP, or all of the above. The latest example of leftist vitriol has Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, current radio talk-show host and possible 2012 GOP presidential contender, as its -- dare we say? -- target…. Where are the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons and the rest of the racial, gender and ethnic grievance industry amid the chirping crickets? Maybe it's the self-made successful entrepreneur part that bothers them. Cain challenges the liberal orthodoxy by saying people should find inspiration in "God, yourself and the greatest country in the world," not from the government. On that score, he says "stupid people are running this country." We are burdened, he says, by "too much regulation, legislation and taxation," and the "only way to fix our messed-up tax code is to throw it out and put in a whole new system." He denounces a regulatory burden that places $10,000 in compliance costs on business for every worker hired as we wonder why businesses aren't hiring. His is a government that allows wealth creation rather than redistribution and promises a better life for our children rather than an unconscionable burden of debt.

Sounds a lot like what Donald Trump is saying. Donald Trump also thinks stupid people are running the country. They may be stupid, but they are clever and they have their bevy of useful idiots in politics, the legal profession, and the media to help. Herman Cain was a threat to their power. So was Mitt Romney. So too is Donald Trump. Cain and Romney had to be destroyed with lies. So too must Donald Trump.

Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.