On Friday afternoon, an audio recording was released of Donald Trump gleefully bragging about what apparently is a favorite pastime for him: sexually assaulting women. In it, Trump described his attempt to “fuck” a married women, who he moved on “like a bitch” because:
… when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
And in case you’ve been in a cave since that news broke, let’s get you all caught up.
First, about an hour after the story came out, Trump issued a sorry if you were offended non-apology, dismissing it as “locker room banter.”
About an hour after the so-called apology was released, Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, was giving a speech and—this is amazing—said:
When he [Trump] does his talking, he doesn't go tiptoeing around all those thousands of rules of political correctness.
Then, oddly enough—after 15 months of Trump’s racist, bigoted, misogynistic garbage—Republicans were outraged and started issuing statements and demanding apologies. From Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, from Senators John McCain and Marco Rubio (both up for re-election, by the way) and more, along with calls for Trump to step aside, not to mention a pulled endorsement or two.
So with the outrage continuing to grow, in the early hours of Saturday morning, Trump released a video that was originally billed as an apology. And technically speaking, the words “I was wrong and I apologize” did pass his liver-like lips. Six whole words. The rest was excuses, deflections and attacks on and threats to Hillary and Bill Clinton.
There was of course talk amongst Republicans about Trump stepping down and what the mechanism would be to replace him. Sadly, for Republicans, that ship has sailed. Trump is the nominee, the ballots have been printed and voting has begun. Suck it up, boys, he’s all yours.
And of course, the twitterverse was going crazy.
There’s so much more to say and so much more to come … and of course the second presidential debate is happening on Sunday night. What are the odds that this is the most-watched political debate in the history of … the world?
Stay tuned.