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Being elected president shortly after surviving the publication of the leak »Access Hollywood“The band in 2016 is the moment when Donald Trump defied political gravity.
A politician was heard on videotape saying some truly disgusting things about women and yet voters still elevated him to the highest office. Trump’s ability to survive this embarrassing episode is reflected in his climb back to the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, despite losing the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the results.
It’s easy to forget how stunning it was to hear Trump on that tape for the first time and how many Republicans who then called on him to drop out of the presidential race now support him.
While the embarrassing recording somehow represents Trump’s greatest triumph, it’s also something that continues to haunt him, as it became the center of his hush money criminal trial in New York Friday.
RELATED: Read more about the testimony of former Trump aide Hope Hicks.
The ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape Reexamined
Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016 seems even more improbable in the narrative. Hicks, her former close associate, told jurors about what must have been the incredibly awkward moment when she read a transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape — in which he boasted about being able to grope women — to her boss.
“It was a crisis,” she said of her post’s impact on the campaign. It’s a sordid affair, and the broad outlines were generally known even without Hicks’ testimony Friday. The judge in the case ruled early in the trial that the tape itself could not be played in court, but it was described.
It’s worth looking back at the earthquake triggered by the “Access Hollywood” tape during the 2016 campaign. When the video came out, it left many people speechless.
The tape was recorded in 2005 and leaked to the Washington Post, which published the video on October 7, 2016, just over a month before Election Day. Trump is heard talking about his unsuccessful attempts to “move on” with an unnamed married woman, then talking crudely about his uncontrollable desire to kiss an actress he is about to meet, Billy Bush, then anchor of “Access Hollywood”.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he told Bush. “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the whore.
Here is a video published by CNN at the time:
The consequences were immediate
Several Republicans who now fully support Trump, such as Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, called on him in 2016 to step down immediately. The impression within Trump’s inner circle was that most Republican lawmakers wanted him removed from the ticket, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie later wrote in his memoir.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives at the time, Paul Ryan, declared himself “disgusted”. And then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus thought Trump should either resign or lose in a landslide, according to Christie and then-Trump aide Steve Bannon.
Even Trump’s wife, Melania, who rarely makes public statements, expressed disgust at the lyrics in the tape, although she later called them “boy talk.”
Trump actually apologized
Things were so bleak at the time that Trump delivered what is probably the only apology of his political career in a direct-to-camera video posted to Twitter, now X, in which he admits the tape is real and takes responsibility for it the responsibility.
“I said it. I was wrong. And I apologize,” Trump said, while making it clear that he would not leave the race. Being exposed to people on the campaign trail had changed him, Trump said, before attempting to equate his remarks with his allegations against former President Bill Clinton.
I’ve written before about how rare it is to hear such a thing from Trump.
It wasn’t the only surprise in 2016
Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has faced her own unwanted surprises, the biggest being former FBI Director James Comey’s July announcement that she had been “reckless” in the processing of classified data contained in electronic mail.
Even worse for Clinton, on October 28 of that year, a little over a week before Election Day, Comey told Congress that the FBI was reviewing emails linked to Clinton’s personal server found on Clinton’s laptop. ‘Anthony Weiner, a disgraced former congressman married to his top leader. help.
Clinton would get more people voting, but Trump, to his own surprise, would get the White House.
Return of the cassette
Today, the “Access Hollywood” tape is back. A key to prosecutors’ case against Trump is their allegation that he and his former fixer Michael Cohen agreed to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has had to tone down any allegations of impropriety, such as having an alleged affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. This led to the hush money Cohen paid Daniels.
Cohen served federal prison time for violating campaign finance law with the payments. The crime Trump is accused of is falsifying business records related to Cohen’s post-election reimbursement.
How the band has aged
Trump has since questioned whether it was his voice on the tape, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin reported for The New York Times in 2017. Most recently, Trump was questioned in May 2023 on the tape by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. He tried to analyze the words on the tape.
“I said, ‘Women leave you,’” he told Collins. “I didn’t say ‘catch,'” he said, misquoting the tape.
A moment that tested loyalty
Bannon would later tell Charlie Rose, a former CBS reporter, that the “Access Hollywood” moment was important because it divided Republicans into those who would be loyal to Trump and those who were part of the mainstream. Christie lost a Cabinet position in the Trump administration because of his revulsion for the tape, Bannon told Rose.
In the years since, loyalty to Trump has become an increasingly important marker among Republicans, as Trump fends off a sizable field of challengers in the presidential primary.
According to a recent report from CNN’s investigative team, perceived loyalty to Trump could become a de facto requirement for many federal officials if he wins in 2024 and carries out his plan to reclassify much of the federal bureaucracy as political appointees.
Trump still haunts
While the recording testifies to Trump’s ability to defy political gravity, it also contributed to his humiliation in other areas.
A deposition in which he was asked about the tape was played before jurors who later found him responsible for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, at a New York department store in the Juries ordered Trump to pay more than $80 million for defamation, although he appealed those decisions.
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