Donald J. Trump unleashed a slashing new attack on Hillary Clinton overBill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions on Friday as he sought to put the Clintons’ relationship at the center of his political argument against her before their next debate.
Mr. Trump, aiming to unnerve Mrs. Clinton, even indicated that he was rethinking his statement at their last debate that he would “absolutely” support her if she won in November, saying: “We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see.”
In an interview with The New York Times, he also contended that infidelity was “never a problem” during his three marriages, though his first ended in an ugly divorce after Mr. Trump began a relationship with the woman who became his second wife.
Speaking by phone from a campaign swing in Michigan, he said that he was “absolutely disgusted” that Mrs. Clinton had allied herself politically with a Miss Universe winner, Alicia Machado, whom Mr. Trump had derided for gaining weight.
Mr. Trump said that Mrs. Clinton, who has portrayed Ms. Machado as a victim of Mr. Trump’s cruel insults, had “made this young lady into a girl scout when she was the exact opposite.” He asserted, without offering any evidence, that Ms. Machado had once participated in a sex tape.
Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, argued that Mrs. Clinton’s support for Ms. Machado was part of a pattern by the Democrat of treating women to suit her own political ends, and raised Mrs. Clinton’s criticism of women who had been involved with her husband, such as Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers.
He said he was bringing up Mr. Clinton’s infidelities because he thought they would repulse female voters and turn them away from the Clintons, and because he was eager to unsettle Mrs. Clinton in their next two debates and on the campaign trail.
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“She’s nasty, but I can be nastier than she ever can be,” Mr. Trump said.
“Hillary Clinton was married to the single greatest abuser of women in the history of politics,” he added about Mr. Clinton. “Hillary was an enabler, and she attacked the women who Bill Clinton mistreated afterward. I think it’s a serious problem for them, and it’s something that I’m considering talking about more in the near future.”
Mr. Trump said he believed that his own marital history did not preclude him from waging such an attack. He became involved with Marla Maples while he was still married to his first wife, Ivana, who divorced him in 1991. He married Ms. Maples in 1993; they were divorced in 1999. He married his current wife, Melania, in 2005.
While Mr. Trump has bragged about his sexual exploits over the years, he charged in the interview that Mr. Clinton had numerous indiscretions that “brought shame onto the presidency, and Hillary Clinton was there defending him all along.”
But when asked if he had ever cheated on his wives, Mr. Trump said: “No — I never discuss it. I never discuss it. It was never a problem.”
Asked specifically about his affair with Ms. Maples when he was married to Ivana Trump, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t talk about it. I wasn’t president of the United States. I don’t talk about it. When you think of the fact that he was impeached, the country was in turmoil, turmoil, absolute turmoil. He lied with Monica Lewinsky and paid a massive penalty.”
A Clinton campaign spokesman on Friday night described Mr. Trump as “unhinged” in his attacks on Mrs. Clinton over Ms. Machado. “As Hillary has said, Donald Trump can say whatever he wants about her, but she will not be bullied out of defending Alicia and the many other women Trump has attacked and demeaned,” said the campaign spokesman, Brian Fallon.
Mr. Trump’s sharply negative attacks on the Clintons, and on Ms. Machado, pose a significant political risk to his own appeal: Two-thirds of voters already see him unfavorably, according to polls, and he is struggling to win over female voters — including white women, a majority of whom have historically supported the Republican candidate in presidential elections.
The Clinton campaign is running a new attack ad against Mr. Trump featuring his insults of women over the years and has aggressively defended Ms. Machado; Mrs. Clinton called her on Friday to offer thanks “for all she had done and the courage she has shown, particularly as this became elevated through a war of some pretty unpleasant words,” according to Nick Merrill, a campaign spokesman.
But Mr. Trump is also scrambling for ways to rebound from his widely panned performance in the first general-election debate on Monday, when he frequently interrupted Mrs. Clinton and failed to raise issues that he wanted to discuss, like her ties to wealthy donors to the Clinton Foundation and the attacks on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Mrs. Clinton’s team, Democrats supporting her and many senior Republicans have braced for an attack on the Clintons’ marital history, seeing it as inevitable — particularly now that Mr. Trump is being advised by several people connected to efforts in the late 1990s to reveal Mr. Clinton’s affair with Ms. Lewinsky and to the subsequent impeachment battle.
David Bossie, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign manager, is the president of the conservative group Citizens United, and worked as an investigator who searched Arkansas for evidence of Mr. Clinton’s personal misdeeds during the 1992 presidential campaign.
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