An Activist Group Is Playing Trump's 'Access Hollywood' Tape on Loop Near the White House
PHOTO: Ultraviolet via Facebook
It’s been exactly a year since the Washington Post delivered one of the most shocking October surprises to date: the Access Hollywood tape revealing then-presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. Trump’s exact words—”Grab them by the pussy … You can do anything”—will likely be forever etched into the American consciousness.
But as a timely reminder to the country that this same man now occupies the White House, women’s rights group UltraViolet will be playing the video on loop from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Constitution Avenue.
“It was not so-called ‘locker room talk,’ it was a man bragging about sexually assaulting women,” UltraViolet cofounder Shaunna Thomas told the Hill. “That man may now sit in the Oval Office, but we will not let him—or anyone else—forget the tape or those comments.”
Trump had dismissed the remarks as “locker room talk” or “banter” multiple times, first in an official statement from his campaign (which has since been removed from the site), and later during his debate with Hillary Clinton. Though, for many reasons, it was been a poor excuse at the time, Trump’s apology became all the more meaningless when nearly a dozen women came forward with sexual assault allegations against him.
Trump’s so-called “locker room talk” hadn’t just been talk—according to these women’s traumatic accounts, it’d been action too.
Thomas said there’s a clear connection between Trump’s history as an alleged sexual abuser and his administration’s treatment of women. During his nine months in office, the Trump administration has diligently chipped away at women’s rights, championing health care legislation that would doom women’s reproductive health, giving state’s the go-ahead to withhold funds from abortion clinics and nixing protections for women in the workplace.
And just Friday morning, on the anniversary of his pussy-grabbing comments, the Trump administration announced it would weaken the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers provide birth control coverage for its employees.
Thomas isn’t surprised.
“The Donald Trump on that tape is the same Donald Trump that sits in the Oval Office every day, aggressively pursuing an anti-woman agenda,” Thomas said, “including the active dismantling of legal protections for survivors of sexual assault.”