Why is it “grab them by the pussy” that did it? Why, after everything he’s said, is it this that’s pushed senior Republicans to finally turn away from Donald Trump? Not slurring Mexican immigrants as drug runners and rapists. Not calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. Not retweeting an anti-Semitic meme that originated on a white supremacist message board. Not his racist and sexist bullying of a Venezuelan Miss Universe winner, and not his heavy-handed hinting that assassination might be an appropriate way to put Hillary Clinton out of the running.
None of those things have left a mark on the Trump campaign like that inflicted by a few minutes of candid tape from 2005. As Trump went to film a cameo on soap opera Days of Our Lives, he was accompanied by a crew from the TV entertainment news programme Access Hollywood recording behind-the-scenes footage; some of that footage was unbroadcastable, and some of that has now been leaked. “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them,” says Trump in the recording. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” Then: “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
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