The moment Trump defied gravity is back to haunt him

Politics Live TV The moment Trump defied gravity is coming back to haunt himAnalysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN 5 minute readUpdated 10:07 AM EDT, Sat May 4, 2024Former President Donald Trump attends his criminal trial in New York on May 3, 2024.

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Being elected president shortly after surviving the publication of the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016 is the moment in which Donald Trump defied political gravity.

A politician was heard on tape saying truly disgusting things about women and yet was still elevated by voters to the highest office. Trump’s ability to survive that embarrassing episode echoes in his reascendance to the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, despite losing the 2020 election and then trying to overturn the results.

It’s easy to forget how dumbfounding it was to hear Trump on that tape for the first time and how many Republicans who called on him to drop out of the presidential race back then now support him.

If the embarrassing tape somehow represents Trump’s greatest triumph, it is also something that continues to haunt him, as it became the focus of his hush money criminal trial in New York on Friday.

The ‘Access Hollywood’ tape reexamined

Trump’s 2016 victory in the Electoral College seems only more improbable in the retelling. Hicks, his former close aide, told jurors about what must have been the unbelievably awkward moment she read a transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape – in which he brags about being able to grope women – to her boss.

“This was a crisis,” she said of its release’s impact on the campaign. It’s sordid stuff, and the outlines were generally known even without Hicks’ testimony on Friday. The judge in the case ruled at the start of the trial that the tape itself can’t be played in court, but it has been described.

It is worth revisiting the earthquake the “Access Hollywood” tape set off in the 2016 campaign. When the video came out, it left many people speechless.

The tape was recorded in 2005, and it was leaked to The Washington Post, which published the video on October 7, 2016, a little more than a month before Election Day. Trump is heard talking about trying, unsuccessfully, to “move on” an unnamed, married woman, and then crassly talks about his uncontrollable desire to kiss an actress he is about to meet with then-“Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he told Bush. “You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the p****.”