Washington Post
Jenna Johnson, Sean Sullivan and Robert Costa
The Republican Party plunged into an epic and historic political crisis Saturday with just a month to go until Election Day as a growing wave of GOP lawmakers called on defiant presidential nominee Donald Trump to drop out of the race in the wake of a video showing him make crude sexual remarks.
The fallout from the tape published by The Washington Post – in which Trump bragged in obscene language about forcing himself on women sexually – threatens to endanger the party’s hold on both houses of Congress in addition to the White House, which many Republicans now fear is lost. The episode also comes ahead of Sunday’s second presidential debate in St. Louis, which was already a crucial moment but could determine how widely the damage spreads.
By midafternoon Saturday, more than two dozen Republican lawmakers had called on Trump to leave the race, often touting vice presidential candidate Mike Pence as an alternative. Others including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 GOP nominee, said they could no longer vote for Trump but stopped short of calling on him to drop out. Still, the Republican Party’s top leadership – including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and party chairman Reince Priebus – continued to support Trump even as they denounced his comments.Trump, who offered a qualified apology for the remarks in an overnight video statement while also attacking former president Bill Clinton, told The Post he would not drop out under any circumstances.”I’d never withdraw. I’ve never withdrawn in my life,” Trump said in a Saturday morning phone call from his home in Trump Tower in New York. “No, I’m not quitting this race. I have tremendous support.
Following a Friday report by The Washington Post on a 2005 video of the GOP presidential nominee, various Republicans have said they no longer plan to vote for him and call for him to drop out.
They’re not going to make me quit, and they can’t make me quit,” Trump added, speaking of those who have urged him to step aside. “The Republicans, you’ve got to remember, have been running for a long time. The reason they don’t win is because they don’t stick together.”
In the 2005 videotape, Trump boasted in vulgar language about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. They let you do anything.”
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her allies seized on the video as another in a long line of disqualifying remarks and actions by Trump, and increased their pressure on Republican candidates to disavow their support of him or risk being tied to him on Election Day. Democrats are now openly confident they will win the Senate and increasingly optimistic that they could even flip control of the House, which seemed out of reach just a few days ago.
Clinton does not plan to do any interviews or make any further statement herself until the debate Sunday, when she plans to quickly address Trump’s fitness for office, said a close aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe some of the internal discussions. Several Clinton associates said she will not detail the particulars of Trump’s comments, instead attempting to show her fitness for high office by contrast.
Another burst of offensive remarks by Trump emerged Saturday as CNN aired a review of hours of newly uncovered audio from shock-jock Howard Stern’s show. Trump spoke of his daughter Ivanka’s breasts, three-way sex and not dating women who are older than 35. He also described barging in on nude Miss Universe beauty pageant contestants in their dressing room, characterizing his visits as inspections.
Several Democrats said they think Trump will come into Sunday’s town-hall-style debate with the mind set of a “wounded animal,” a factor that could make him more dangerous to Clinton – and to himself.
In the wake of a new Washington Post report showing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaking in very lewd terms about women in 2005, some Republicans are calling for Trump to step down as nominee. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)”I’ve never seen a candidate walk into a debate with this much at stake,” said longtime Clinton ally James Carville. “He’s overweight, he’s old, he’s tired and he’s crabby. And he’s going to have a very long hour-and-a-half.”
Trump and his surrogates signaled that the nominee could defend himself by attacking Bill Clinton, whom Trump has accused of abusing women and making comments while golfing with Trump that are more crude than the ones Trump made in 2005. On Saturday night, Trump retweeted two messages from an account labeled as belonging to Juanita Broaddrick, who alleged in 1999 that Bill Clinton had raped her in April 1978. The tweets accused Bill Clinton of being a “rapist” and accused Hillary Clinton of threatening her; the Clintons have repeatedly denied the allegations.Some news coverage of Trump included warnings of graphic material or profane language, another sign of how ugly the election has become and, given Trump’s threats to invoke Bill Clinton’s infidelities, how much worse it might get.
Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative and outside Trump adviser, said Saturday that he and the InfoWars conspiracy website were selling 10,000 T-shirts with Bill Clinton’s face next to the word “rape,” a dark parody of President Obama’s 2008 “Hope” posters. He worried that Trump had missed a “prime opportunity” to attack Hillary Clinton over the affairs, but said there was still a way for Trump to litigate it.”It’s not about adultery,” Stone said. “It’s about Bill hiring heavy-handed private detectives. It’s about violence against women. I know you and your colleagues want this to be about infidelity, but it’s about Hillary Clinton enabling attacks on women.”A growing number of elected lawmakers and other prominent Republicans said they simply cannot vote for Trump, given the video. McCain, who is up for reelection in November, said Saturday that he and his wife would not vote for Trump and will instead “write in the name of some good conservative Republican who is qualified to be president.” McCain had supported Trump even though the businessman joked about him being captured during the Vietnam War and then refused to apologize.
Many said they would like to hand the ticket over to Pence, but experts said it would be almost impossible logistically for the party to replace its nominee a month from the election. Among those calling for Trump to drop out is the third-highest ranking Republican in the Senate, John Thune of South Dakota, who tweeted Saturday: “Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately.”Condoleezza Rice, who was secretary of state during George W. Bush’s administration, posted on Facebook: “Enough! Donald Trump should not be President. He should withdraw. As a Republican, I hope to support someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on earth.”
