The demise of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been predicted so many times since the golf-obsessed poltroon first announced that he wanted to “make America great again” in the summer of 2015. But squalid revelations seem to bounce off Trump. None of the normal rules apply about conduct and temperament. What would have finished any other candidate barely makes a dent in Trump’s hide.
Now, he may finally have met his match. Women voters always threatened to defeat him in November and, if they were in any doubts about his views, a tape from 2005 has appeared in which Trump makes a string of lewd and worse remarks. He talks of grabbing women. This is beyond the standard Trump stuff. It is extremely sleazy and sinister.
“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful… I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”
There is a lot more in this style. The recording – recorded on an open mic – took place on board a coach taking Trump to make a guest appearance on a US soap opera. After a dismal ten days for the Republican nominee, in which his views on women and tax avoidance have taken centre stage, this tape could – should – be the end, but we’ll see.
It must be bad though. Trump has apologised, which is something he hardly ever does: “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course – not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”
The tape was obtained by the Washington Post’s David A. Fahrenthold, a reporter who has been doing fantastic work tracking Trump’s highly questionable claims about his charitable donations. If Trump now loses badly in November, Fahrenthold deserves a prize for completing the process of destruction and saving civilisation.
There may be another twist, of course. Trump is a TV star who understands reality TV. Facing defeat and humiliation might he go for the redemptive on-air confession and reinvention in the next televised debate with Hillary Clinton on Sunday in St. Louis?
In a further bizarre link, the ghastly conversation took place with a member of the Bush family, the television host Billy Bush. As various people have pointed out it seems strange that the Bush family were not able to make use of this information on Trump when Jeb Bush was getting trounced by Trump in the primaries.
