NEW YORK (Bloomberg) - Billionaire Donald Trump, under attack by opponents as well as Republican politicians for crude remarks about women, does not "have any clue about what's going on in the world" and young Americans must vote to make sure he does not get elected president, according to actor Robert De Niro.
"I'm so angry because this fool," was allowed to get to this place in the contest, De Niro told reporters on Sunday in the emirate. Young people "have to vote", he said. "They must vote. It's imperative."
Mr Trump has defied party members' calls for him to quit the presidential race after his remarks in a 2005 video that surfaced on Friday. In the video, Mr Trump talks about groping women, trying and failing to have sex with a married woman, and being able to "do anything" to women because of his fame.
Open rancor about the GOP's White House choice thrust the party into its biggest crisis in decades.
"100 per cent," said Mr Trump, 70, about staying in the race during a brief appearance outside his namesake tower in Manhattan to greet supporters after one Republican lawmaker after another abandoned him in an extraordinary political reckoning just one month before Election Day.
Those withdrawing their support for Mr Trump or calling for him to step aside included No. 3 Senate Republican John Thune; Senator Rob Portman, who is running for re-election in Ohio; Senator John McCain, a former Vietnam War prisoner whom Mr Trump famously mocked last year, only to win the nomination; Senator Kelly Ayotte, who's facing a tough re-election in the presidential battleground state of New Hampshire; and even a pair of US House members from staunchly conservative Alabama.
Some Republican lawmakers said Mr Trump should step aside to allow his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, to become the nominee, and some said they'd write in Pence on their ballot in November.
Mr Pence, a 57-year-old former US House member, has served as a bridge between Mr Trump and the Republican establishment.
Mr Pence said in a statement that Mr Trump's comments in the video were offensive and indefensible.
"I am grateful that he has expressed remorse and apologised to the American people," Mr Pence said. "We pray for his family and look forward to the opportunity he has to show what is in his heart when he goes before the nation tomorrow night", when Mr Trump faces Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in their second debate.
Mr Pence scrapped a planned appearance at a Wisconsin political event with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Saturday afternoon. Mr Pence called Mr Trump to tell him of the cancellation, said a person familiar with the matter. Mr Trump's owns plans to attend the event - which would have been his first public campaign appearance with Mr Ryan - had been scrapped earlier, in light of the video.
Mr Ryan at the event sidestepped the issue, referring to his Friday statement that he was "sickened" by Mr Trump's remarks and hoped the nominee "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".
Influential Republicans have been reaching out to Mr Pence about what role he might be willing to play in the event that Mr Trump drops out, said two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named. They didn't identify those gauging Mr Pence's interest privately.
The Republican National Committee would have the authority to fill a vacancy on the ticket, but even if the party could convince Mr Trump to drop out, early voting has begun in some states. Election-law experts said that means any effort to get a Republican other than Trump into the White House, through wrangling in the Electoral College and US Senate, would be a long shot.
