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Tag: billy bush
#EndorseThis: Shocking Unaired Footage From Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape

#EndorseThis: Shocking Unaired Footage From Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape

Newly released, anonymously sourced footage brings Superbowl commercial star Terry Tate into the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of Donald Trump and Billy Bush, engaged in what the Republican nominee later called “locker room banter” and what his wife Melania dismissed as “boy talk.” But the no-nonsense “Office Linebacker” accepts no excuses, as he demonstrates with lightning speed.

“Terrible Terry” has a choice couplet for Donald Trump: “Everybody knows when you go for the grope, Terry gonna say nope! That ain’t new, son!!” And he offers a stern reminder to everyone else: “Drop the remote and get out and vote! That’s how Terry Tate makes America great!!”

You had best listen, and click.

 

Stop Trying To Understand Trump Supporters

Stop Trying To Understand Trump Supporters

Twenty-year-old Hana Barkowitz had never before had this reaction to a stranger’s T-shirt.

“I really wanted to say something,” she told me Wednesday. “This has become so personal for me.”

Since the Trump video, she means.

Last Friday, The Washington Post released a 2005 video capturing Donald Trump admitting on a live microphone that he is a sexual predator.

He was talking to Billy Bush, who was then working for “Access Hollywood” and has just been fired from NBC’s “Today” show. In the video, they were chuckling it up before Trump’s cameo appearance on the soap opera “Days of Our Lives.”

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them,” Trump said. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything — grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

The video went viral in the time it took us to draw our collective breath.

When Hana Barkowitz — her first name is pronounced HAHN’-uh — first heard about it, she resisted watching.

“I thought, ‘2005? That’s a long time ago.’ But so many were talking about it that I finally decided to watch it.”

She was stunned.

“My mouth dropped open. He kisses women without asking. He is promoting rape culture and sexual advances without consent.”

Barkowitz is no political neophyte. A native of Pittsburgh, she grew up talking politics and is currently president of Kent State’s College Democrats. I first met her during a panel discussion on campus, after I started teaching journalism there as a professional in residence. She was standing with her Republican counterpart at the time, and they readily admitted to being friends.

She is a cup-runneth-over kind of activist. Her enthusiasm for politics — and life in general — leaves you feeling more optimistic than before you met her. She is, by her own admission, sometimes confrontational about issues that concern her. That’s a long list.

Last weekend, though, was different. Barkowitz and a friend had decided to drive to a popular flea market in Cleveland. For the first half-hour or so, she enjoyed the respite from a long week.

Then she saw the white man in his 50s wearing the Trump shirt.

“I really wanted to say something,” she said. “I wanted to say to him, ‘How dare you? How dare you wear that shirt? You’re a white man. What Trump says doesn’t affect you at all. You will never know what this feels like. You’re so lucky.'”

Instead, she said nothing, after her friend pleaded with her to resist.

“She said, ‘Please don’t. What could he possibly say to make you feel better?’ And she was right.”

Still, it weighs on her, which I found out Wednesday after running into her on campus. She sounded like so many young women I’ve talked to this week, many of whom have never before cared much about politics. They can’t believe this guy is running for president or that anyone would openly admit to supporting him.

“I wouldn’t want to vote for someone with whom I wouldn’t feel safe in a room,” Barkowitz said.

Trump has dismissed his comments as “locker room talk.” On Wednesday, Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James shut that down in an interview after practice:

“What is locker room talk to me? It’s not what that guy said. We don’t disrespect women in no shape or fashion in our locker rooms. That never comes up. … I got a mother-in-law, a wife, a mom and a daughter, and those conversations just don’t go on in our locker room. … What that guy was saying, that’s not — I don’t know what that is. That’s trash talk.”

For months now, I’ve been trying to understand some of our fellow Americans who support Trump, the champion of racism, xenophobia and misogyny. We should not judge them, the pollsters and pundits lecture. We should get to the heart of what is really bothering them. They have their reasons for being so angry.

Well, you know what? Hana Barkowitz and so many young women like her are angry, too, and they have their reasons. They are coming of age as a major presidential candidate ramps up misogyny, aided and abetted by the cowardice of Republican politicians who continue to support an admitted sexual predator in his quest to be the leader of our country.

I’m done trying to understand these Trump supporters. Hana Barkowitz is right. They’ll never know how this feels. And they don’t care.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo: Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump signs autographs for supporters after speaking at a rally at the Nugget Casino Resort in Sparks, Nevada February 23, 2016. REUTERS/James Glover II

Cartoon: Melania Is Mad

Cartoon: Melania Is Mad

Melania Trump Calls Taped Comments By Donald Trump ‘Boy Talk’

Melania Trump Calls Taped Comments By Donald Trump ‘Boy Talk’

(Reuters) – Melania Trump rose to her husband’s defense on Monday, describing lewd comments the Republican presidential nominee made on a leaked 2005 video in which he bragged about groping women as “boy talk.”

Trump, who has kept a low profile during her husband’s presidential bid, gave her first television interviews since the Oct. 7 release of the tape that has shaken Donald Trump’s campaign. He trails Democrat Hillary Clinton in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Melania Trump told CNN her husband was engaged in “boy talk, and he was led on – like, egged on – from the host to say dirty and bad stuff” in the conversation with “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush.

NBC said on Monday that Bush was leaving the “Today” show, following his role in the taped conversation with Donald Trump.

Melania Trump, a Slovenian-born former model, added in a CNN interview that aired on Monday night that she was surprised because she had never heard her husband use that kind of language before.

“No. No, that’s why I was surprised, because I said like I don’t know that person that would talk that way, and that he would say that kind of stuff in private,” Melania Trump said.

She told CNN that her husband behaved at times like an overgrown boy and that she saw his “Access Hollywood” remarks as in keeping with that behavior.

“Sometimes I say I have two boys at home. I have my young son and I have my husband. But I know how some men talk, and that’s how I saw it, yes,” she said.

Trump told CNN she agreed with first lady Michelle Obama that kissing or groping someone without consent constituted sexual assault, adding: “But every assault should be taken care of in a court of law. And to accuse, no matter who it is, a man or a woman, without evidence is damaging and unfair.”

‘MOVING ON’

In partial transcripts from a separate interview with Fox News, she said she had forgiven her husband for the comments in the tape, which was first published by the Washington Post.

“Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate. And he apologized to me. And I … accept his apology. And we are moving on.”

They were her first public comments since a statement she issued after the tape’s publication in which she said her husband’s remarks did “not represent the man that I know.”

Melania Trump told Fox News that her husband, a New York businessman and former reality television star, was committed to running for office even though it was difficult because he had been “in so many shows, so many tapes” over the years.

Asked if it was fair for the media or her husband to bring up charges of infidelity in former President Bill Clinton’s past, Melania Trump told Fox News: “Well, if they bring up my past, why not?”

After Trump denied during a debate with Clinton on Oct. 9 that he had actually done the things he bragged about in the tape, a number of women accused him of groping and kissing them without permission in incidents stretching back decades. He has denied the charges.

Asked about those accusations, Melania Trump told Fox News: “All these women are coming out and they are allegations but they are not true. Why now? Why three weeks before the election?”

“I believe my husband,” she told CNN. “This was all organized from the opposition. With the details that they got, did they ever check the background of these women? They don’t have any facts.”

(Reporting by Eric Walsh in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Photo: Melania Trump sits down with CNN television host Anderson Cooper during an exclusive interview in New York, to be aired October 17, 2016. Courtesy CNN/Handout via REUTERS