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Being elected president soon after surviving the The publication of the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016 is the moment Donald Trump defied political gravity.
A politician was heard on tape saying truly disgusting things about women and yet was elevated by voters to the highest office. Trump’s ability to survive this embarrassing episode echoes his rise to power Republican presidential nomination for the third time, despite losing the 2020 election and then trying to overturn the results.
It’s easy to forget how astonishing it was to hear Trump on that tape for the first time and how many Republicans who called on him to drop out of the presidential race back then now support him.
If the embarrassing tape somehow represents Trump’s greatest triumph, it is also something that continues to haunt him as it became the focus of his criminal trial in New York on Friday.
RELATED: Read more about former Trump aide Hope Hicks’ testimony.
Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory only seems more unlikely when recounted. Hicks, her former close aide, told jurors about what must have been the incredibly awkward moment she read a transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape — in which he brags about being able to grope women — to her boss.
“This was a crisis,” she said of the launch’s impact on the campaign. It’s a sordid thing, and the contours were generally known even without Hicks’ testimony on Friday. The judge in the case ruled at the beginning of the trial that the tape itself could not be played in court, but this was described.
It’s worth revisiting the earthquake that the “Access Hollywood” tape triggered in the 2016 campaign. When the video was released, 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 trying unsuccessfully to “move on” with an unidentified married woman, and then talking rudely about his uncontrollable desire to kiss an actress who is about to meet the then-host of “Access Hollywood.” Billy Bush.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he told Bush. “You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.
Here’s a video CNN published at the time:
Several Republicans who are completely behind today Trump, like Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, called on him in 2016 to resign immediately. The perception within Trump’s inner circle was that most Republican lawmakers wanted him off the ticket, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie later wrote in a memoir.
Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was “disgusted.” And then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus thought Trump should 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 her disgust with the words on the tape, although she later dismissed them as “boy talk.”
Things were so bleak at that time that Trump issued what is probably the only apology of his political career in a direct-to-camera video posted on Twitter, now X, in which he admits the tape is real and takes responsibility .
“I said that. I was wrong. And I apologize,” Trump said, although he made clear he would not drop out of the race. Being exposed to people during the campaign changed him, Trump said, before trying to establish an equivalence between his words and the allegations against former President Bill Clinton.
I’ve written before about how rare it is to hear such a thing from Trump.
Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has faced her own unwelcome surprises, the most important of which was former FBI director James Comey’s announcement in July that she was “careless” in her handling of sensitive data in emails.
Worse for Clinton, on October 28 of that year, just over a week before Election Day, Comey told Congress that the FBI was analyzing emails related to Clinton’s personal server found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, a former disgraced congressman married to his boss. advisor.
Clinton would get the vote of a greater number of people, but Trump, surprising even himself, would keep the White House.
Now, the “Access Hollywood” tape is back. A key to prosecutors’ case against Trump is the allegation that he and his former accomplice Michael Cohen agreed to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has had to clamp down on any allegations of impropriety, such as having an alleged affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. This led to hush money Cohen paid Daniels.
Cohen served time in federal prison for violating campaign finance law with the payments. The crime Trump is accused of is falsifying business records related to his reimbursement of Cohen after the election.
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. More recently, Trump was asked in May 2023 about the tape by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. He tried to analyze the words on the tape.
“I said, ‘Women do,’” he told Collins. “I didn’t say ‘grab,’” he said, misquoting the tape.
01:19 – Source: CNN
Trump asked if he stands by comments from ‘Access Hollywood’ tape. Listen to your answer
Bannon would later tell former CBS journalist Charlie Rose that the “Access Hollywood” moment was important because it separated 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 due to his disgust with the tape, Bannon told Rose.
In the years that followed, loyalty to Trump became an increasingly important marker among Republicans as Trump defeated a vast field of challengers in the presidential primaries.
Perceived loyalty to Trump could become a de facto requirement for many federal employees if he wins in 2024 and carries out a plan to reclassify a large portion of the federal bureaucracy as political appointees, according to a recent report from the Trump administration team. CNN investigation.
If the tape is proof of 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 for jurors who later found him responsible for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, in a New York department store in the 1990s. Juries ordered Trump to pay more than $80 million for defaming her, although he appealed those rulings.
