With the election clock ticking down, a wave of shaky allegations against Donald Trump has surfaced, only to crumble under even the slightest bit of scrutiny. The Atlantic ran the most talked-about of these claims, but as soon as the ink dried, key insiders came forward to dismiss them as false — leaving many to wonder whether these stories are last-ditch efforts from a nervous Democratic campaign.
The first hit piece from *The Atlantic*, penned by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, leaned heavily on anonymous sources. The article accused Trump of becoming furious over funeral expenses for Vanessa Guillén, a soldier murdered at Fort Hood in 2020. According to the article, Trump allegedly lashed out about the $60,000 bill with a racial slur. However, the people closest to the situation — including Guillén’s sister, her family lawyer, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — have outright denied this ever happened. Meadows’ spokesman even said, “Trump absolutely did not say that.” Yet Goldberg still quoted anonymous “participants” in the room, raising questions about why these sources needed to stay hidden when publicly criticizing Trump often leads to media praise, book deals, and TV appearances.
The second allegation in *The Atlantic* came from former White House chief of staff John Kelly. Kelly accused Trump of regularly praising Hitler’s generals, conveniently reviving this claim just two weeks before voters head to the polls. It’s worth noting that Kelly has made wild accusations against Trump before, but this new story felt like a stretch — especially since no credible source has corroborated it. On top of that, two former senior aides to Mike Pence, including retired Gen. Keith Kellogg and Nick Ayers, swiftly denied Kelly’s account. Kellogg didn’t mince words, calling Kelly “complicit in this fraud” and slamming the vice president for amplifying these baseless allegations.
If that weren’t enough, former model Stacey Williams surfaced at a Harris campaign event to accuse Trump of groping her — 31 years ago. This timing, paired with the event’s overt political backdrop (a “Survivors for Harris” event), makes the accusation feel suspicious. Trump’s name has been in the headlines for decades, yet Williams waited until 2024 — and in the final stretch of a presidential election — to make her claim. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s campaign immediately dismissed the story as fabricated. Williams’ previous work as an Obama campaign activist further undermines her credibility, casting doubt on the motives behind her late-breaking allegation.
This tactic of reviving unsubstantiated claims isn’t new. The Guardian, which published Williams’ allegations, has run similar stories against Trump before, just ahead of elections — stories that mysteriously vanished after failing to gain traction with major American outlets. The goal seems clear: create enough noise to distract and damage, even if the facts don’t hold up.
Mark Halperin, host of *The Morning Meeting* podcast, recently shared that he and other reporters have been pitched a “bombshell” story supposedly capable of derailing Trump’s campaign entirely. But Halperin says he doesn’t believe it’s true. He warns that media players are trying to influence the race’s outcome with these last-minute stunts, comparing the current frenzy to the chaos stirred by James Comey’s last-minute reopening of the Clinton email investigation in 2016. “Maybe Jeffrey Goldberg just happened to finish his story two weeks before the election,” Halperin quipped, dripping with skepticism.
At the end of the day, these stories appear to be part of a larger, desperate strategy by the media and the Harris campaign. When internal polls show a tight race — or worse, slipping support — these kinds of eleventh-hour smears start surfacing. The problem is that the public isn’t biting this time, and with every denial and fact-check, the campaign’s credibility takes a hit.
