Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone -- saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it” -- according to a video obtained by The Washington Post.More:
"I'm automatically attracted to beautiful women -- I just start kissing them, it's like a magnet," Trump said in 2005 during a conversation with Billy Bush caught on audio during the taping of an interview for Access Hollywood. "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab 'em by the pussy."
... Earlier in the conversation, Trump recalls talking about trying to woo a married woman.
"I moved on her actually, she was down in Palm Beach and I failed. I'll admit it. I did try to fuck her, she was married … and I moved on her very heavily," Trump is heard saying.
Please note that this conversation took place a few months after his January 2005 marriage to Melania.
Trump is struggling with women, including white women, who normally vote Republican. I don't know how he can win them back after this. And remember, it's still early October. There might be something worse than this teed up and waiting for him. I've been wary of reports saying that Hillary Clinton is potentially on the verge of a huge victory, but I can't really imagine her losing her lead now.
But may I return to one point I made earlier in the week? I criticized Virginia Heffernan for a Politico piece in which she portrayed Trump as a victim of Howard Stern's dark interviewing arts. Stern, according to Heffernan, lured Trump onto his show in the 1990s and then manipulated him into saying embarrassing things about sex. I'll grant that Stern has skills as an interviewer. But here's a conversation (admittedly not intended for broadcast) in which Trump embarrasses himself with sex talk -- and his discussion partner is Billy Bush, who's not exactly known as an expert in persuading interviewees to bare their souls. That was the point I was trying to make about Trump: that it takes little or no prodding to get him to talk like this. At the slightest nudge, he'll tell you in no uncertain terms what a sleazy horndog he is. And now it's going to kill him at the polls.
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I'm less certain that Trump is going to suffer for saying that he still thinks the Central Park Five were guilty of rape, notwithstanding their exoneration based on DNA evidence. I live in New York, so it's hard to imagine how strong opinions are about the case in the rest of America, but Trump has lost most of non-white America already, and my guess is that most of white America will back him on this -- hey, those were the "wilding" kids, and they sure looked guilty to Middle Americans.
I'll add for the record that the lead prosecutor in the case, Linda Fairstein, who now writes bestselling crime novels, dug in her heels when DNA testing matched Matias Reyes, a man convicted of other rapes, to evidence collected at the crime scene (no DNA from any of the Five was linked to the rape):
But what, then, of Reyes's confession and the DNA results? Why wasn't he caught at the time? Fairstein said, “God knows I wish we had databanks of DNA that long ago, because we would have connected him.” She continued, “I think Reyes ran with that pack of kids. He stayed longer when the others moved on. He completed the assault. I don't think there is a question in the minds of anyone present during the interrogation process that these five men were participants, not only in the other attacks that night but in the attack on the jogger. I watched more than thirty detectives -- black, white, Hispanic guys who'd never met each other before -- conduct a brilliant investigation. Remember, I had a lot of cases with comatose victims. They wake up, more often than not. What's the likelihood that a sophisticated group of cops and prosecutors are going to make up a story that she can refute when she wakes up?” (The jogger recovered from her injuries, for the most part, but never remembered anything about the attack.)I don't think they made it up -- they had confessions (obtained under duress) and they may really have believed that the holes in their case weren't holes.
Law enforcement never likes to be challenged in matters like this. But just because these folks insist they were right all along doesn't make it true.
In any case, I'm sure soon enough we'll have Rudy Giuliani making Trump's and Fairstein's case all over the media.
Who are you and what have you done with Steve M., who has consistently and correctly pointed out that Trump's people cannot be alienated by any such revelations as these, which only strengthen their identification with him?
ReplyDeleteHey Frank In other words you seem to be calling Trump supporters" Despicable" is that true? I believe I heard that somewhere before.
ReplyDeleteYou may recall I was posting this on Twitter all week and after today's 2005 Grab Her Pussy tape it is very relevant to the women vote: https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-is-a-textbook-abuser-and-women-everywhere-know-it/
ReplyDeleteI wish we could have seen Tim Kaine ask Mike Pence about this video.
ReplyDeleteSo the new talkingpoint is that Trump is deplorable, but his people are not? Well, that was fast; but it only makes sense as a marker for 2018 and beyond. (Wait: there I go again, thinking about whether things make sense.)
ReplyDeleteFor the rest, go talk to my neighbor around the corner, the one with the "Deplorables for Trump" sign in his yard.
Nice vetting, GOP!
ReplyDeleteLOL!!!
Well, in their party's defence, lesser asshole always bow-down to bigger assholes!
And, how mant bigger assholes are there in this country?
Oh, probably a few - but how many are so obvious about it?!
A glance at Fox's comment section shows that the die-hards don't care, they just bleat "Bill was worse!"
ReplyDeleteEverybody else, though... Heh. Good news today.
You have to marvel at the quality and volume of oppo research that's clobbering Trump just about every other day with a revelation about his business sleaze, misogyny, etc. He hasn't had a chance to get back on offense since the debate and may not be able to mount a "comeback" of any sort in the remaining weeks, especially if there's more of this stuff ready to go.
ReplyDeleteOh, and welcome back from the edge, Steve!
Regarding the "wilding" case: I was a prosecutor in Chicago in the late '80s when a young woman medical student was abducted one night from the parking lot of her school. Her body was found some days later. She had been raped and murdered, beaten with chunks of concrete. Oh, and she was white. The whole city was glued to the story from the time of her disappearance until the case was cleared. Big press case.
ReplyDeleteFour juveniles were picked up, black kids, taken to Area 4 Violent Crimes, where they were sweated, threatened and, for all I know, keelhauled. I was working Juvenile Court, and while these kids were juveniles, they were charged as adults, so I wasn't in on all that was happening. They "confessed" and each got about a million years.
Northwestern U.'s Innocence Project got ahold of the case, as the kids, now in prison, insisted the confessions were involuntary, beaten out of them. The evidence collected was submitted to DNA analysis (not available at the time of the crime), and, waddaya know? Didn't match any of the kids, but it did match two guys who now serving prison sentences for, gulp, rape. The four original defendants were exonerated, and sued the city big time.
I knew the main detective who'd gotten the statements in the first place. I was talking with some fellow prosecutors years later when all this had shaken out. One of my colleagues insisted the kids were still connected somehow, because she knew the detective, and there was no way he would have locked up those kids if they hadn't been involved. Well, I knew that detective, and I had no trouble believing he'd lock up four innocent kids as long as they were black and he could close the case. So Fairstein's statement doesn't really surprise me. It disgusts me. But it doesn't surprise me.
I am loath to say what I'm going to say, especially after the rest of this year, but yeah, this should just about do it for Donald and the Trumpalos.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Putin - I mean Assange - dropped some material about Hillary's Goldman Sachs speeches today, too. But what I've seen so far seems pretty mild. It's a little embarrassing (nice words about Keystone and TPP), not much more.
And hardcore porn beats inside baseball any day.
>Trump's people cannot be alienated by any such revelations as these, which only strengthen their identification with him
ReplyDeleteTrump's poll numbers have a floor, for sure. But this is more about pushing current fence-sitters, isn't it? Surely this lowers the ceiling in terms of his percentages with college-educated women, for example.
The Wikirapes tapes are a wash at best. Her comments on open borders and trade may hurt her in the Rust Belt, but she's also "caught" endorsing Canadian-style single payer, endorsing several different forms of bank regulation (to the bankers' faces no less), trashing Citizens United, and fully embracing green renewable energy. Her campaign can easily spin those Wall Street speeches to prove her progressive bonafides.
ReplyDeleteThe logical outcome, saw it months ago. Tried to tell you about it - Carnival Barker at the World Wrestling Federation - but everyone was to busy Bernie Bashing to listen.
ReplyDeleteCaveat Emptor
Ten Bears
Jeb! gets his revenge thanks to Billy. I think this is the part where Monty Burns Trump spits out the mouthful of 3 eyed fish, no?
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone, anyone at all, not at least wonder at the convenience of the Trump sleeze video coming out in the same news cycle as the Clinton Bankster speeches?
ReplyDeleteI heard several Euro American women on talk radio already say:
ReplyDeletethey've said as bad or worse in private conversations about men.
they totally relate to life's rudiments-power and stardom are aphrodisiacs, they just don't appreciate Bill Clinton like brutality associated with it and a phony feminist using him to retain a road to power while doing business deals unrelated to protecting American interests with eg Saudis who really do subjugate women.
@KenWrong: Nice to hear you can get Radio Moscow loud and clear.
ReplyDeleteBeen up to any hacking lately? The American government would like to know.
A possible Republican strategy: Wait until about two weeks before the election, and then dump Trump in favor of Pence, who is as bad as Trump but unknown to most Americans. They will then run on a massive Koch funded campaign of "See, we really are good guys- we ditched the bastard and here is this wonderful Mike guy." In the two weeks remaining, it will be absolutely impossible for the Democrats to show the nation what a jerk Pence is.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that this will happen, or even that it would work, but today, I think it's their best shot.
Ryan and Joe McCarthy's ghost prefer the Goldwater Girl, understood.
ReplyDelete@Green Eagle: And you think Trumpalos will just fall in line and say, well, Pence is just as good? This is a cult of personality. Taking Trump off the ticket will only lose votes for Republicans. To say nothing of the potential for violence.
ReplyDeleteThey are royally fucked, my friend.
I think the "Trumpalos" will fall in line behind whoever promises to cut their taxes the most, no matter who it might be. After all, that and being licensed to hate is all they are ever after.
ReplyDelete@Green Eagle: No, this is a personality thing. I don't the Trumpalos even know their tax rate. They just don't want anything going to non-whites. To them, Pence is liking meeting the parents. They ain't going to bed with the parents.
ReplyDeleteIf anybody thinks the Trump dead-enders aren't Trump dead-enders, they should have a look at Kelly Ayotte's FB page. Her re-election is done.
ReplyDeleteIs there ever going to be a post here discussing Clinton's exposed secret pledge to promote job outsourcing until a One Hemisphere if not One World government of economic levelling occurs, ie until the US worker slides about 50% more toward Mexican worker status?
ReplyDelete