By any standard, Donald Trump is cratering. His average approval rating, as calculated by FiveThirtyEight, now stands at 38.4 percent. He’s increasingly becoming a major drag on the GOP, as evidenced by the shellacking it took in Virginia and the growing Democratic lead in the generic congressional ballot.
Trump seems to be falling back on his mainstay–insisting that all the criticism he is faced is driven by fake news. But it looks like he’s getting desperate. That’s about the only conclusion that can be drawn from reports that he now insists one of the worst moments of his brief two-plus year foray into politics never really happened.
Last October, it initially looked like Trump’s then-flagging presidential campaign had suffered a fatal blow with the release of a taped conversation between Trump and then-“Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush in September 2005. That tape provided a staggering and appalling insight into Trump’s attitudes about women. In case you missed it, listen here.
Trump boasted that he tried to make a pass at Bush’s then co-host, Nancy O’Dell, he “did try and f**k her” and “moved on her like a bitch” even though she was married. But when he saw she had “big phony tits,” he lost interest.
Later, he boasted about how he had to have Tic Tacs on hand in case he started kissing actress Arianne Zucker. After all, he was attracted to pretty women like nails to a magnet. To hear him talk, the feeling was mutual. Supposedly, women him do anything he pleased with them because of his star status–even “grab ’em by the p***y.”
However, according to The New York Times, Trump now insists that the tape wasn’t real. Reportedly, he told a Republican Senator earlier this year that it “was not authentic”–an assertion he repeated to an adviser in recent weeks.
Really, Mr. Trump? You weren’t saying the same thing last year, when you said it was nothing more than “locker room banter.” And just hours later, you issued what sounded like an apology for those remarks.
And when Anderson Cooper asked you about that tape at the last presidential debate, you said it was “locker room talk,” though you weren’t proud of it.
And only now, you are insisting that tape isn’t real. Why should we believe you now?
Besides his rather quick admission that the tape was legit last year, we have some other anecdotal evidence that suggests it was real. For one thing, it matches the behavior Salma Hayek says she witnessed when Trump tried to make a pass at her. Trump has also admitted to groping Melania in public.
As you can see, this latest attempt at alternative facting from the White House fails–and bigly.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available via a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
