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shortly thereafter elected president survive The release of the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016 was the moment when Donald Trump defied political gravity.
A politician was heard on tape saying some really unpleasant things about women, and yet he was promoted to the top job by voters. Trump’s ability to survive that embarrassing episode is also reflected in his return to office. Despite losing the 2020 election and subsequently attempting to overturn the results, the Republican Party won its third presidential nomination.
It’s easy to forget how stunned we were the first time we heard Trump’s words on that tape, and how many of the Republicans who called for him to withdraw from the presidential race at the time now support him.
If it’s an embarrassing tape somehow It represents Trump’s biggest victory, but it’s also an issue that continues to haunt him, as it became the focus of a hush-money criminal trial in New York on Friday.
RELATED: Read more about the testimony of former President Trump aide Hope Hicks.
Trump’s 2016 electoral victory looks even more unlikely in the retelling. Ms Hicks, her former aide, told jurors it was an incredibly awkward moment when she read out to her boss an “Access Hollywood” tape in which she boasted that she could molest women.
“This was a crisis,” she said of the impact the release had on the campaign. It was sordid, and the outline was known to the public even without Hicks’ testimony on Friday. The judge in the case ruled at the start of the trial that the tape itself could not be played in court, but that was explained.
It’s worth revisiting the earthquake caused by the “Access Hollywood” tape in the 2016 campaign. When this video was released, many people were speechless.
The tape was recorded in 2005 and leaked to the Washington Post, which published the video on October 7, 2016, a little more than a month before Election Day. President Trump has talked about his unsuccessful attempts to “move on” with an unnamed married woman and his desire to kiss an actress he was about to meet with then-“Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush. I could hear him ranting about his lack of desire.
“When you become a star, they let you do it,” he told Bush. “You can do anything. Just get me there.”
Below is the video released by CNN at the time.
Multiple Republicans who are totally behind the times today. Trump, like Utah Sen. Mike Lee, called for his immediate resignation in 2016. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie later wrote in his memoir that Trump’s inner circle knew that most Republicans wanted him removed from the election.
“I felt sick,” said then-House Speaker Paul Ryan. And then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus believed Trump would resign or lose in a landslide, according to Christie and then-Trump aide Steve Bannon. That’s what it means.
Even Trump’s wife Melania, who rarely makes public statements, expressed disgust at the words in the tape, which she later dismissed as “boy talk.”
The situation at the time was so dire that Trump issued perhaps the only apology of his political career in an on-camera video posted to Twitter (now known as X), in which he He admitted that the tape was genuine and accepted responsibility.
“I told you, I was wrong, and I apologize,” Trump said, but made clear he had no intention of withdrawing from the race. Trump said interacting with people during his campaign changed him, before trying to draw parallels between his own words and his claims against former President Bill Clinton.
I’ve written before about how unusual it is to hear something like that from President Trump.
Hillary Clinton, President Trump’s Democratic rival in 2016, has faced some unwanted surprises of her own, the most important of which was former FBI Director James Comey’s email in July of that year. The company announced that it had been “careless” in handling the confidential data.
To make matters worse for Clinton, on October 28, 2018, just over a week before Election Day, Director Comey was found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, a disgraced former congressman who was married to a top Clinton official. He told Congress that he was investigating emails related to Clinton’s personal server. Aide.
Clinton will likely win even more votes. But Trump, to even himself’s surprise, ends up taking the White House.
Now, the “Access Hollywood” tape is back. Key to the prosecutor’s case against Trump is that Trump and former fixer Michael Cohen paid adult film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 presidential election. The claim is that he consented.
President Trump had to quash all allegations of wrongdoing, including allegations that he had an affair with a porn actress while his wife was pregnant. That led to the hush money Cohen paid Daniels.
Mr. Cohen was serving a federal prison sentence for violating campaign finance laws regarding the payments. The crime Trump is accused of is falsifying business records related to insurance repayments. Mr. Cohen after the election.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin reported in the New York Times in 2017 that Trump has since questioned whether it was his voice recorded on the tape, and added: As recently as May 2023, Trump was asked about the tape by CNN’s Caitlan Collins. He tried to parse the words on the tape.
“I said, ‘Women forgive me,'” he told Collins. “I didn’t say ‘grab it,'” he said, misquoting the tape.
01:19 – Source: CNN
President Trump was asked if he stood by his comments from the “Access Hollywood” tape.listen to his reaction
Bannon later told former CBS journalist Charlie Rose that the “Access to Hollywood” moment was a key moment that divided Republicans into Trump loyalists and the mainstream. Mr. Bannon told Mr. Rose that Mr. Christie lost a Cabinet position in the Trump administration because he disliked the tapes.
In the years since, loyalty to Mr. Trump has become an increasingly important metric among Republicans as he has defeated leading challengers in presidential primaries.
A recent report by CNN’s investigative team suggests that if Trump wins in 2024 and implements his plan to reclassify the majority of federal officials as political appointees, loyalty to Trump will change. It may become a de facto requirement for employees.
If the tape was evidence of President Trump’s ability to defy political gravity, it also helped humble him in other areas.
A deposition in which he was asked about the tape was played to jurors, who later found him guilty of sexually abusing former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll at a New York department store in the 1990s. It was certified as. A jury ordered President Trump to pay more than $80 million for defaming her, but Trump has appealed those decisions.
