The moment Trump crossed the line has come back to haunt him

(CNN) — Winning the presidency shortly after the release of the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016 is the moment Donald Trump defied political seriousness.

A politician was heard on tape saying very disgusting things about women, and yet voters voted him into the highest office. Trump’s ability to survive that embarrassing episode, despite losing the 2020 election and then attempting to overturn the results, is echoed in his rise to the Republican presidential nomination for a third time.

It’s easy to forget how disappointing it was to hear Trump for the first time in that video and how many Republicans who called on him at the time to drop out of the presidential race now support him.

If the embarrassing tape represents Trump’s greatest triumph in some ways, it is also something that continues to haunt him, as it became the centerpiece of his criminal bribery trial in New York on Friday.

‘Access Hollywood’ film re-examined

Restated, Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory looks even more unlikely. Hicks, his former close aide, told jurors what must have been an incredibly awkward moment as he read his boss the transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape – in which he claims to be able to grope women.

“It was a crisis,” he said of the impact of his posts on the campaign. It was disgusting, and its outlines were generally known even without Hicks’ testimony on Friday. The judge in the case ruled at the beginning of the trial that the tape could not be played in court, but its contents were described in the courtroom.

It is worth revisiting the earthquake that the film “Access Hollywood” published in the 2016 campaign left many people speechless.

The tape was recorded in 2005 and leaked to the Washington Post, which published the video on October 7, 2016, exactly a month before Election Day. Trump is heard talking about a failed attempt to “move on” with an unnamed married woman, and then about his uncontrollable desire to kiss an actress he met with Billie, then-host of “Access Hollywood.” Dirty talk bush.

He told Bush, “When you’re a star, they let you do that.” “You can do anything. Grab them by the a**.”

Responses were immediate

Many Republicans who fully support Trump today, such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah, called on him in 2016 to resign immediately. As former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie later wrote in his memoirs, the perception within Trump’s inner circle was that most Republican lawmakers wanted to remove him from the ticket.

Then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said he was “disgusted”. And according to Christie and then-Trump ally Steve Bannon, then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus thought Trump should resign or he would lose in a landslide.

Even Trump’s wife Melania, who rarely makes public statements, expressed outrage over the words of the tape, though she later said it was “guy talk.”

Trump apologized

Things were so desperate at the time that Trump issued perhaps the only apology of his political career in a direct-to-camera video posted to Twitter (now X), in which he acknowledged that the tape was real and took responsibility.

“I said it. I was wrong. And I apologize,” Trump said. However, he made it clear that he would not be out of the election race. Trump said exposure to people during the election campaign changed him, before attempting to draw parallels between his words and allegations against former President Bill Clinton.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/784609194234306560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

I’ve written before about how strange it is to hear something like this from Trump.

This wasn’t the only surprise in 2016

Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, faced unwelcome surprises of her own, the biggest of which was former FBI Director James Comey’s announcement in July that she was “careless” in her handling of classified data in emails.

To make matters worse for Clinton, on October 28 of that year, just a week before Election Day, Comey told Congress that the FBI had found Clinton’s personal information on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, a disgraced former congressman married to her top aide. Was reviewing server related emails.

Clinton will get more votes, but Trump, surprising even himself, will win the White House.

return of tape

Now, the movie “Access Hollywood” is on the front pages again. A key to prosecutors’ case against Trump is the allegation that he and his former middleman Michael Cohen agreed to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels to weigh in on the 2016 presidential election.

Trump had to deny any allegations of wrongdoing, such as an alleged affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. Due to this, Cohen had to suffer the consequences of Daniels’ silence.

For those payments, Cohen spent time in federal prison for violating campaign finance law. The crime Trump is accused of is falsifying business records related to reimbursements made to Cohen after the election.

how old is the tape

Trump has since questioned whether it was his voice that was on the tape, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin reported for The New York Times in 2017. More recently, in May 2023, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Trump about the tape. He tried to analyze her words.

“I told him, ‘Women leave you,'” Trump explained to Collins. “I didn’t say ‘catch’,” he insisted, misrepresenting the contents of the tape.

A moment that tested loyalty

Bannon later told former CBS journalist Charlie Rose that the “Access Hollywood” moment was important because it separated Republicans between those who would be loyal to Trump and those who were part of the mainstream. Bannon told Rose that Christie lost a cabinet post in the Trump administration because he expressed disgust on the tape.

In the years since this episode, loyalty to Trump has become an important indicator among Republicans, especially after Trump defeated a wide field of rivals in the presidential primaries.

According to a recent report from CNN’s research team, loyalty to Trump could become a de facto requirement for many federal employees if he wins in 2024 as he plans to reclassify much of the federal bureaucracy as political appointees. Working on.

keep chasing trump

If the tape is evidence of Trump’s ability to defy political seriousness, it has also contributed to his disgrace in other areas.

A statement asking him about the tape was played to jurors, who later found him responsible for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist in New York in the 1990s, although the jury found Trump guilty of defaming him. He appealed those decisions.