Donald J. Trump posted a Twitter message Sunday morning highlighting a new interview with a woman who claimed in 1999 that she was raped by Bill Clinton, signaling that he may bring up the accusation at Sunday's debate in an effort to counter criticism after the release of a video showing him speaking of women in vulgar sexual terms.
In a video clip of the interview, which runs for about 8 1/2 minutes and was posted as an exclusive on Breitbart News, the website that was run by Steve Bannon before he became Trump's chief strategist, the woman, Juanita Broaddrick, recounts a story that was first televised in an interview with the NBC newsmagazine show "Dateline," several months after impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton had begun.
Trump's promotion of the video followed the Friday release of a recording from 2005 in which Trump made vulgar sexual comments, causing many prominent Republicans to say they could not support his candidacy and sending his campaign into a tailspin.
Broaddrick has said that the rape occurred in an Arkansas hotel room in 1978. Years later, she told FBI investigators working on behalf of the former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr that Clinton had raped her, recanting an affidavit in which she said that the incident had not taken place.
At the end of the video that was published Sunday morning, Broaddrick accuses Hillary Clinton of being a knowing enabler of her husband.
She says that Clinton had at first thanked her kindly for helping with her husband's campaign for governor, before changing her attitude, and "with this very angry look on her face" asking Broaddrick if she understood the effect of her actions.
"And that frightened me," Broaddrick says.
Aaron Klein, the Breitbart reporter who interviewed Broaddrick, asks her if she thinks Clinton knew what Broaddrick says she had experienced.
"At that moment, and I have to go by what I felt then and the look that she gave me, I felt like she knew," Broaddrick says. "And that she was telling me to keep quiet."
About an hour after he posted the video, Trump's mood seemed bolstered at the effect that the clip had on his supporters, whose messages of encouragement he had been steadily posting.
"So many self-righteous hypocrites," he wrote about his Republican critics in another Twitter post. "Watch their poll numbers — and elections — go down!"