Trump remains defiant amid storm over vulgar remarks
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REPUBLICAN Donald Trump struck a defiant tone in the face of calls for him to abandon the US presidential race yesterday, attacking prominent Republicans and saying he has “tremendous support” despite a storm over vulgar comments he made about women.
With a month to go before the November 8 election, he took to social media to quash any speculation he could leave the race.
“Tremendous support (except for some Republican leadership”). Thank you,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
“So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers — and elections — go down!” Trump tweeted, apparently referring to those Republicans who had withdrawn support for his candidacy over a 2005 video that emerged last Friday.
On a bus headed to the set of soap opera “Days of Our Lives,” Trump was recorded saying he was drawn like a magnet to beautiful women.
“I just start kissing them,” he boasted. “I don’t even wait.”
After the recording was released, the backlash was swift. Critics across the political spectrum said Trump’s comments crossed the line from vulgarity to assault.
“Someone with such disrespect for women, with such a misogynistic lifestyle who boasts about using his power to sexually assault women cannot — and will not — be the leader of this country,” said National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill.
On the tape, Trump brags about women letting him kiss and grab them. “When you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump said. “You can do anything.” He added: “Grab them by the p----. You can do anything.”
A string of Republican senators, in reaction to the revelations in the video, withdrew their support for Trump, and there were calls for
him to quit the race. Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever.”
Trump previously called a Miss Universe winner “Miss Piggy,” referred to actress Rosie O’Donnell as a “pig,” and speculated that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly asked him tough questions because she was menstruating.
One sidebar of the debate centered on whether men really talked that way when not around women. “All men talk like this, get over it,” was one comment on Twitter. To which many replied: “No they don’t.”
Trump initially called his remarks “locker room banter.”
But Brandon Morrow, a pitcher with the San Diego Padres, said he’d been around locker room banter but Trump’s words were “a few of the most disgusting things I’ve heard a man say.”
Trump called the controversy “a distraction from the issues we are facing today.” He said his “foolish” words were different to the words and actions of Bill Clinton, whom he accused of abusing women, and Hillary Clinton, whom he accused of having “bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims.”
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