By Christine Hauser and Jonah Engel Bromwich

New York Times

As the presidential election comes down to the wire, it seems as if Americans are grasping at anything to cope with the deluge of vitriol emerging from an increasingly bitter campaign.

Sometimes, all they can do is tweet.

The candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have had two debates so far, and Twitter has become the forum for three notable threads, fueled by audio leaked last week of Trump’s lewd comments from 2005 and a phrase he uttered during a debate on Sunday night.

‘Tweet me your first assaults’

One prominent Twitter thread, jump-started by Kelly Oxford, a Canadian novelist and screenwriter on Friday, began on Friday, shortly after The Washington Post scooped NBC and reported on the recording of Trump making vulgar comments about women, including a remark about grabbing a woman’s genitals.

Many social media users and television pundits noted that his bragging amounting to a description of sexual assault. Oxford shared her own story of being molested when she was 12 years old and asked women to “tweet me your first assaults.”

The hashtag took off, with thousands of women responding: Oxford said on Twitter the next day that she had been receiving stories for 14 hours straight, at a minimum of 50 per minute.

“Harrowing,” she wrote. “Do not ignore.”

On Sunday, the actress Amber Tamblyn posted her own story on Instagram, telling of an ex-boyfriend from an “emotionally and physically abusive relationship” who had sexually assaulted her. She wrote that while they were at a nightclub, the man grabbed her by her genitals, “lifted me up off the floor, literally, and carried me, like something he owned, like a piece of trash, out of the club.”

“His fingers were practically inside of me, his other hand wrapped tightly around my hair,” she wrote. “I screamed and kicked and cried.”

These tales of assault unfurled even as Trump promoted a Breitbart story on Sunday in which Juanita Broaddrick renewed her long-standing allegations of rape against former president Bill Clinton. Shortly before the debate, Trump also held a news conference with three women who said they had been attacked by Clinton.

The internet backlash to Trump’s leaked statements about women came from within both parties. Amanda Owens, 25, the founder of a conservative organization called Future Female Leaders, wrote in a blog post on Saturday that the recording had caused her to speak out against Trump for the first time.

“The leaked audio of Donald Trump that got released yesterday is disgusting and vile,” she wrote, adding, “It is indefensible.” She said that she would be looking to vote for an alternative candidate.

‘Locker Room Talk’

Some professional athletes pushed back against Trump’s statement that his 2005 words from a hot mike while on a bus with Billy Bush, then a host on “Access Hollywood,” were “locker room talk.”

Robbie Rogers, a midfielder on the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team, said on Twitter that he was “offended as an athlete” that Trump “keeps using this ‘locker room talk’ as an excuse.”

“I know what locker room banter sounds like. This is far more disgusting,” he wrote.

Kendall Marshall, a former Philadelphia 76ers basketball player, wrote: “PSA: sexual advances without consent is NOT locker room talk.”

Queen Harrison, an Olympic hurdler, wrote on Twitter: “‘Locker room talk’, ‘Boys will be boys’, ‘Harmless banter.’ These are not valid excuses for behavior. Never have been, never will be.”

Jacob Tamme of the Atlanta Falcons said, “It’s not normal. And even if it were normal, it’s not right.”

Others, however, brushed off Trump’s words as a typical way that men express themselves when in the company of other men, and under the hashtag #LockerRoomTalkin5Words, some argued that women do it, too.

(On Monday, NBC announced that Bush, who had drawn harsh criticism from women, had been suspended from his hosting gig on the “Today” show.)

‘Muslims Report Stuff’

Another prominent thread began after Trump answered a debate question about Islamophobia from an audience member, Gorbah Hamed, by saying: “We have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on. When they see hatred going on they have to report it.”

The comment gave rise to a hashtag, #MuslimsReportStuff, and mocking reports from social media users, including the banal — “I did laundry this morning but still haven’t put it away,” wrote Sana M. — the humorous — “I’d like to report @dietpepsi for not being as good as @dietcoke” — and the political.

Others noted Trump’s looming presence behind Clinton during the debate, which many saw as a menacing tactic.

The third and last presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 19.

© 2016 The New York Times Company