Access Hollywood is not here for President Donald Trump’s games. The insider tabloid show has come out to emphatically state that the voice heard on the infamous 2005 tape that captured Trump telling then-host Billy Bush about how his celebrity allows him to sexually assault women is authentic.
According to a piece published in the New York Times, Trump has been claiming privately that he doubts the authenticity of the recording, in which he can be heard saying that when men are stars, women let them “do anything,” including “grab them by the pussy.”
Because the president is a known liar who has been trying to rewrite history since he took office, Access Hollywood wanted to slam any notion that it somehow released audio that wasn’t the voice of the president.
“We wanted to clear something up that has been reported across the media landscape,” the show’s Natalie Morales said alongside co-host Kit Hoover during Monday’s broadcast, Yahoo! reports. “Let us make this perfectly clear: The tape is very real. Remember, his excuse at the time was ‘locker-room talk.’ He said every one of those words.”
Let’s recall that shortly after the tape was released in October 2016, Trump released an apology video in which he took ownership of his derogatory speech: “Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong and I apologize ... I never said that I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not.”
He would later categorize the language as “locker-room talk” during a presidential debate hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “I don’t think you understood what was—this was locker-room talk. I’m not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I’m not proud of it. But this is locker-room talk.”
Also, Access Hollywood added to its statement: Keep our names out of your mouth! (OK, fine. Whatever. They didn’t say the last part.)
Read more at the New York Times and Yahoo!.