As everyone heard, in 2005, Trump was recording boasted that his celebrity status allowed him to kiss and grope women with impunity.
This brings to mind a short video he created with Giuliani in 2000. In it, Giuliani is dressed in drag in a store. Trump remarks on Giuliani’s beauty, who begins sampling perfume, spraying some first on her neck, then on her breasts. Trump then pushes his face into Giuliani’s cleavage, who slaps him: “Oh, you dirty boy! Donald, I thought you were a gentleman!”, and turning and leaving. Trump then boyishly assures the camera, “You can’t say I didn’t try.”
If you want to see it yourself, here is the youtube. (Trigger warning: it might cause you throw up a bit in your mouth.)
The clip was made for laughs, of course. But many a true word—as the saying goes—is spoken in jest.
I am struck how much the narrative arc of this vignette resonates to the modus operandi that Trump claimed in the Billy Bush tape.
In the Bush video, Trump tells Bush that he had unsuccessfully tried to seduce a married woman by taking her furniture shopping, adding “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I don’t even wait.” (Trump’s celebrity status, Bush is told, gives him impunity for this and more.)
This is basically his play for Giuliani-in-drag. They are shopping and he makes his move by shoving his face between Giuliani’s fake breasts. He doesn’t even wait. It’s like a magnet.