Washington: US President Donald Trump has dismissed allegations that he raped a woman in a dressing room of an upscale Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s, terming it "fiction".

E Jean Carroll, 75, a television show host and magazine columnist, made the accusation in an essay published on Friday in New York magazine. She said she did not report the alleged attack as a friend of her advised her at the time that she had no chance of winning.