US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton holds a 9-point lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump nationally, a new poll shows. The former secretary of state has the support of 47 percent of likely voters, while the billionaire businessman has 38 percent support, found the Bloomberg Politics poll, released on Wednesday. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has 8 percent support among likely voters, while Green Party nominee Jill Stein has 3 percent support. Clinton keeps her 9-point lead over Trump, 50 to 41 percent, in a head-to-head matchup.

She has a 4-point lead over Trump among likely voters without a college degree, 48 to 44 percent, while the billionaire trails by 13 points among whites with a college degree. The poll was conducted from October 14 to 17 among 1,006 likely voters. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. Clinton and Trump were literally tied in the Bloomberg poll in September, with 46 percent apiece in a two-way race.

Trump appears to be in freefall after the release of a 2005 audiotape earlier this month of his lewd comments about touching and kissing women without their consent. “Donald Trump’s chances of winning this election have faded,” said Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research Associates, which conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff and his firm Public Opinion Strategies.

Trump rejects polls

However, Trump has rejected such claims and polls as fabricated by media outlets and organizations which want to elect Clinton as president at any cost.

Over the last week, Trump has intensified his criticism of the American electoral system. He called the election process rigged, and said the media is colluding with Clinton in order to beat him.

He has questioned the legitimacy of the US elections, saying that he believed the vote was already being “rigged” at many polling places.

Trump has stated that the November presidential election will determine whether America is a free nation, “or whether we have only the illusion of democracy, but are in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests rigging the system.”

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US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeated his assertion that the 2016 election is rigged, saying a “large-scale voter fraud” is taking place. Over the last week, Trump has intensified his criticism of the American electoral system. He called the election process rigged, and said the media is colluding with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in order to beat him.

On Monday, Trump called his party leaders naive for denying the vote rigging.  “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before Election Day,” the GOP nominee tweeted. “Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!” he added.

Many Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have rejected Trump’s claims, saying such voter fraud is impossible for the November election. They have warned that such allegations could cause unrest.

The White House also denounced Trump’s claim that the presidential election could be “rigged” against him. “Not at all,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday when asked whether the Obama administration is concerned the election could be stolen from the Republican nominee.

“The president is very confident in election officials in both parties in states all across the country” to ensure the elections are “conducted freely and fairly,” the spokesman said.

A day earlier, Trump strongly questioned the legitimacy of the US elections, saying that he believed the vote was already being “rigged” at many polling places.

“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

According to a new poll released on Monday, 41 percent of American voters are now saying the 2016 presidential election could be “stolen” from Trump due to widespread voter fraud.

And 73 percent of Republican voters think the election could be stolen from the billionaire businessman, while 17 percent of Democrats agree with the prospect of rigging.

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has accused the “corrupt” US media of manipulating the 2016 election in favor of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. “Hillary is running for president in what looks like a rigged election,” Trump told supporters in New Hampshire on Saturday.

“The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect her president,” the real estate magnate said.

Trump is furious at the US media, which has launched an offensive against him in recent weeks over his sexual abuse scandal. A 2005 video was released last Friday, in which Trump can be heard making lewd comments about women and bragging about groping them.

A number of women have since come forward claiming that the business mogul has sexually assaulted them. Trump has called the allegations “slander and libel” and part of a “concerted, coordinated and vicious attack” by Clinton and the news media to undercut his campaign.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who earlier withdrew his support from Trump, criticized his comments that question the validity of the US electoral process.

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US First Lady Michelle Obama has launched a scintillating attack against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s “sexually predatory behavior.”

Speaking in support of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire on Thursday, Mrs. Obama said that lewd comments made by Trump about women in a 2005 audio recording could not simply be dismissed as a “disturbing footnote in a sad election season.”

“This is not normal. This is not politics as usual,” she said in a speech during which her voice at times was quaking with fury. “This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesn’t matter what party you belong to. No woman deserves to be treated this way — none of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

The Washington Post released a recording on October 7 in which Trump is heard making vulgar comments about women and having a conversation about trying to have sex with a married woman.

He can be heard saying “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful” women. “I just start kissing them,” he says. “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Trump apologized for the lewd and sexually aggressive remarks, but during the second presidential debate with Clinton, he tried to dismiss the tape as “locker room talk.”

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France says Russian President Vladimir Putin has cancelled his visit to Paris planned for next Tuesday after the French insisted on holding talks only on Syria. “There were contacts between the Kremlin and the Elysee this morning to offer to Putin a working visit on Syria, but excluding all other events that President Hollande could have taken part in,” President Francois Hollande’s office said Tuesday.

“In response to this proposal, Russia has just indicated that it wants to postpone the visit planned on October 19,” a source at the office was quoted as saying. The Kremlin confirmed that President Putin has indefinitely postponed the visit, which envisaged the opening of a Russian cultural center and an exhibition. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the French side had revised the program and insisted that the visit should focus extensively on Syria.

“Regrettably, those events dropped out of the program,” Peskov said, adding it’s up to the French side to explain the reason. “The president decided to cancel the visit,” Peskov said.  Russia on Sunday vetoed a French-drafted resolution calling for an immediate halt of anti-terror airstrikes in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo. Moscow said halting airstrikes “provides cover to terrorists from Jabhat al-Nusra” and other militant groups allied with them. Relations between Paris and Moscow have soured as they back opposite sides in the Syria crisis.

On Monday, Hollande said he had not decided yet whether to meet Putin and claimed that Syrian government forces, backed by Russia, had committed a “war crime” in Aleppo. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault visited Moscow last week before heading to Washington in a bid to garner support for the French draft resolution for a ceasefire in Aleppo.

Last month, Russia brokered a ceasefire in cooperation with the US but it collapsed after an American airstrike killed 83 Syrian troops in Dayr al-Zawr.  The US also failed to implement an important requirement of the peace deal to separate what Washington calls moderate militants from terrorists such as al-Nusra Front members.

Under the deal, the US military had also undertaken to join Russia in targeting terrorists in Aleppo but Washington fulfilled none of the pledges. The calls for a ceasefire come as the Syrian army is tightening the noose around the terrorists in Aleppo as part of its bid to retake the country’s second largest city.

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The Bush family was behind the release of an 11-year-old tape that shows Republican president nominee Donald Trump making lewd comments about women, according James Fetzer, an American scholar and a retired professor in Madison, Wisconsin.

On Friday, The Washington Post released a tape in which Trump is heard making lewd comments about women and having a conversation about trying to have sex with a married woman. GOP officials, including governors, senators and congressmen across the US have disavowed Trump over the sexually obscene remarks caught on a hot microphone.

Even Trump’s apology for the remarks has failed to quell the unprecedented controversy over his comments, prompting growing demands by Republicans for him to quit the race. “During the debate last night against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump completely diffused the furor that has been created by the release of a tape 11 years ago, in a conversation with producer Billy Bush, who turns out to be a cousin of George Herbert Walker Bush,” Professor Fetzer said.

The scholar said the Bush family is “strongly opposed to Trump, because they represent the New World Order, and he’s out to defeat it. [They] were undoubtedly responsible for the release.”

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Hollywood actor Robert De Niro has criticized Americans for putting an “idiot” like Donald Trump in a position where he might become the US president, and agreed with former secretary of state Colin Powell who called Trump a “national disaster.”

De Niro had been enlisted along with several other actors to speak in a non-partisan video encouraging Americans to vote in the November presidential election. But the 73-year-old actor defied script and delivered a scathing rebuke of Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

“He’s so blatantly stupid. He’s a punk, he’s a dog, he’s a pig […] a mutt who […] doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t care. He’s an idiot. Colin Powell said it best: He’s a national disaster. He’s an embarrassment to this country,” the Raging Bull actor said in a video surfaced on Friday.

“It makes me so angry that this country has gotten to this point that this fool, this bozo, has wound up where he has,” he stated.

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US House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton have criticized Republican Donald Trump over his past crude remarks about women. In a conversation leaked first by The Washington Post on Friday, Trump was caught making vulgar comments about objectifying women.

The audio was recorded in 2005 while Trump was on a bus with former “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush. The business mogul can be heard talking about his failed attempt to seduce a “married” woman. “I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. She was married. And I moved on her very heavily.”

He also says, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful” women. “I just start kissing them,” he says. “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Clinton tweeted that “this is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president.” Ryan also said in a statement, “I am sickened by what I heard today,” adding, “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.”

“I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests,” Ryan added.

Trump issued a statement following the leaked audio, saying, “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago.” “Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course – not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended,” he added.

Clinton has increased her attacks on the real estate tycoon because of his behavior toward women. Trump has also been under attack over his disparaging comments on immigrants and Muslims. He has called for all Muslims to be banned from coming to America. He also advocated forced deportation of Mexican migrants by building a long wall along the US-Mexico border.

A new Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released Friday shows that Clinton is leading Trump by 5 percent, 43 to 38, among likely voters. The survey is consistent with other Reuters/Ipsos weekly polls conducted since early September that have indicated the former secretary of state leading the business mogul anywhere from 4 to 6 points.

The poll, which was conducted from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, surveyed 1,695 likely voters.

The poll came after the first presidential debate, when Clinton accused Trump of racism, sexism and tax avoidance, putting him on the defensive.

Many observers believe Trump must win at the second presidential debate on Sunday if he is to regain the momentum in the race.

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US President Barack Obama warns that Republican nominee Donald Trump is “unfit” for presidency and would inflict “lasting damage” if he wins the election. In a fundraising email that went out Monday in Florida, Obama called this election cycle more important than his own historic run for the White House, Newsmax reported.

“Winning the presidential election this year is more important than it was in 2008 or 2012,” read the letter. “Now, that may sound incredible – after all, I’m the guy who had the honor of winning those races. And we’ve been able to accomplish amazing, important things for the people of this country because of our victories.”

Obama said that he did not question whether his Republican rivals in 2008 and 2012 – Senator John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts Governor of  Mitt Romney – were fundamentally capable of serving as president.

“I didn’t have to worry that our very democracy would be endangered if they won,” he added. “This year is different. Donald Trump is unfit to handle the demands of the presidency. His election wouldn’t just mean four years of turning back the clock on all our progress – it could very well mean lasting damage to the nation we love,” Obama said.

The president called on supporters of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to “do everything we can” to stop Trump. “Right now, our team is falling short of where we need to be in terms of fundraising, and with 36 days to go, we can’t waste a minute.”

“Hillary and all the Democrats running in Florida need you to help out with $3 right now,” he said. Obama has repeatedly criticized Trump as unfit for the Oval Office, urging American voters to be careful who they will elect as his successor. The president has said that world leaders have expressed grave concerns to him about Trump’s divisive rhetoric.

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US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has retained her comfortable lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump in the aftermath of the first presidential debate, a new national poll shows. The Politico/Morning Consult poll released Monday showed the former secretary of state leading Trump by a 6-point margin in terms of national support, 42 percent to 36 percent.

Coming in at the third was Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson with 9 percent support, followed by Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 2 percent. Another 10 percent said they were undecided. In a head-to-head matchup, Clinton’s lead over the New York businessman was expanded to 7 points, 46 percent to 39 percent. The poll comes a week after the first presidential debate between the two candidates last Monday, which became the most-watched presidential face-off in the history of US elections.

Politico’s pre-debate version of the poll had found Trump at the top with a one-point lead, 39 percent to 38 percent. During the fiery debate, Clinton accused Trump of racism, sexism and tax avoidance, putting the real estate tycoon on the defensive for much of the 90-minute face-off at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.

In the first Politico/Morning Consult poll after the debate, 49 percent of the respondents thought the former first lady had won. This time, nearly 44 percent of the participants said she was going to win the next debate, expected to be held on Sunday evening. Only 22 percent said the same about Trump.

According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, as of Sunday, Clinton held a 2.5-point national edge, leading Trump 47.5 to 45 percent. Fox News’ latest survey also put Clinton in lead at 49 percent, with Trump trailing her at 44 percent. The only recent poll that put Trump on a stronger footing was conducted by LA Times/USC Tracking, according to which the New York businessman led Clinton 47 percent to 42 percent.

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