(CNN) — Winning the presidency shortly after surviving the release of the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016 is the moment Donald Trump defied political gravity.
A politician was heard on tape saying really disgusting things about women, and yet voters elevated him to the highest office. Trump’s ability to survive that embarrassing episode resonates with his rise to the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, despite losing the 2020 election and then attempting to overturn the results.
It’s easy to forget how disconcerting it was to hear Trump on that video for the first time and how many Republicans who back then called on him to drop out of the presidential race now support him.
If the embarrassing tape in some ways represents Trump’s greatest triumph, it is also something that continues to haunt him, as it became the focus of his criminal bribery trial in New York on Friday.
The ‘Access Hollywood’ film, re-examined
Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory seems even more unlikely if retold. Hicks, his former close associate, recounted to the jury what must have been the incredibly awkward moment, reading to her boss a transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape – in which he boasts about being able to grope women. .
“It was a crisis,” he said of his post’s impact on the campaign. He was sleazy, and the 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 itself 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” unleashed in the 2016 campaign. When it was published, 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 unnamed married woman, and then talks crudely about his uncontrollable desire to kiss an actress he’s about to meet with 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 a**.”
The reactions were immediate
Several Republicans who today fully support Trump, such as Senator 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 Gov. Chris Christie later wrote in his memoir.
Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was “disgusted.” And then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus thought Trump should resign or else he would lose in a landslide, according to Christie and then-Trump aide Steve Bannon.
Even Trump’s wife, Melania, who rarely makes public statements, expressed displeasure at the words on the tape, although she would later say it was “guy talk.”
Trump did apologize
Things were so bleak back then that Trump issued what is likely the only apology of his political career in a direct-to-camera video posted to Twitter, now X, in which he admits the tape is real and takes responsibility.
“I said it. I was wrong. And I apologize,” Trump said, although he made it clear that he would not get out of the race for the election. Being exposed to people during the election campaign had changed him, Trump said, before attempting to draw an equivalence between his words and the accusations against former President Bill Clinton.
I’ve written before about how strange it is to hear something like this from Trump.
It was not the only surprise in 2016
Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, faced her own unwanted surprises, the biggest of which was former FBI Director James Comey’s announcement in July that she had been “careless” in her handling of classified data. in the email.
Worse for Clinton, on October 28 of that year, just over a week before Election Day, Comey told Congress that the FBI was reviewing emails related to Clinton’s personal server found on Anthony’s laptop. Weiner, a disgraced former congressman married to his top aide.
Clinton would get more votes, but Trump, even to his own surprise, would win the White House.
The return of the tape
Now, the film “Access Hollywood” is back on the front page. 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 think about the 2016 presidential election.
Trump had to defuse any allegations of wrongdoing, such as having an alleged affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. That led to Cohen paying Daniels’ silence.
For those payments, Cohen served time in federal prison for violating campaign finance law. The crime Trump is accused of is falsifying business records related to his reimbursement to Cohen after the election.
How the tape has aged
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 his words.
“I told him, ‘Women leave you,'” Trump explained to Collins. “I didn’t say ‘grab,'” he insisted, misquoting the tape’s contents.
A moment that tested loyalty
Bannon would later tell 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. Christie lost a cabinet position in the Trump administration because he expressed disgust over the tape, Bannon told Rose.
In the years since the episode, loyalty to Trump has become an increasingly important indicator among Republicans, especially as Trump defeated a wide field of rivals in the presidential primaries.
Loyalty to Trump could become a de facto requirement for many federal workers if he wins in 2024 as he pursues a plan to reclassify much of the federal bureaucracy as political appointees, according to a recent report by the research team at CNN.
Keep stalking Trump
If the tape is proof of Trump’s ability to defy political gravity, it has also contributed to his humiliation in other areas.
A statement asking him about the tape was played to jurors, who later found him responsible for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, in New York in the 1990s. Jurors ordered Trump paid more than $80 million for defaming her, although he appealed those decisions.
