Trump bragged on hot mic about being able to grope women
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Jeremy Diamond, CNN
This story contains sexually graphic material. Reader discretion is advised.
(CNN) — Donald Trump bragged about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women in previously unaired footage from 2005 that surfaced on Friday.
Trump is heard discussing women in vulgar terms during off-camera banter during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood,” footage which was obtained by The Washington Post.
Trump dismissed the comments as “locker room banter” in a statement released by his campaign and sought to immediately deflect criticism onto the husband of his opponent Hillary Clinton.
The comments immediately raised the stakes for Sunday’s highly anticipated debate between Trump and Clinton. The Democratic nominee has spent months portraying Trump as demeaning toward women and the emergence of the remarks could hand her — and viewers in the town hall audience — more evidence to make that point.
The remarks prompted Trump — for the first time in his nearly 16-month campaign — to apologize.
“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,” Trump said in a statement released Friday.
Clinton’s campaign tweeted a link to the story and said simply, “This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president.”
“This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president,” Clinton tweeted.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, campaigning in Las Vegas, said Trump’s comments “makes me sick to my stomach.”
“I don’t like to say the words that he’s used in the past when he calls women, ‘pigs, dogs and slobs’ … but this is behavior that’s just outrageous and so that there would be a news story that would have more statements like this of this kind, I mean, gosh, I’m sad to say that I’m not surprised,” Kaine said. “I should be surprised and shocked. I’m sad to say that I’m not.”
‘You can do anything’
The hot mic conversation captured in 2005 begins with Trump recounting to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush how he tried to have sex with a married woman.
“I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it,” Trump says in the newly-released audio. “I did try and f&!* her. She was married.”
“I moved on her like a b*!@h, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married,” Trump adds, after saying he took the woman — who is identified only by her first name — out furniture shopping.
“Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look,” Trump says of the woman.
The conversation took place as Trump arrived in a tour bus on the set of “Days of Our Lives,” the soap opera where he was set to make a cameo appearance.
Before Trump stepped off the bus, he and Bush appear to see an actress from the soap opera who greets Trump and Bush.
“Whoa!” Trump says. “I’ve gotta use some tic tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”
“And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the p*$&y. You can do anything,” Trump says.
“Whatever you want,” says another voice.