Lewd Donald Trump Tape Is a Breaking Point for Many in the G.O.P.
Photo
Inside Trump Tower in Manhattan. Donald J. Trump is facing increasing pressure in his own party to end his candidacy.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders began to abandon Donald J. Trump by the dozens on Saturday after the release of a video
showing him speaking of women in vulgar sexual terms, delivering a
punishing blow to his campaign and plunging the party into crisis a
month before the election.
Fearing
that his candidacy was on the verge of undermining the entire
Republican ticket next month, a group of senators and House members withdrew support for him, with some demanding that he step aside. Mr. Trump, however, vowed to stay in the race.
The
list of party figures publicly rejecting Mr. Trump included a host of
prominent elected officials, perhaps most notably Senator John McCain of
Arizona, the 2008 nominee.
“I
thought it important I respect the fact that Donald Trump won a
majority of the delegates by the rules our party set,” Mr. McCain said
in a statement. “But Donald Trump’s behavior this week, concluding with
the disclosure of his demeaning comments about women and his boasts
about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even
conditional support for his candidacy.”
And
in an unheard-of rebuke by a running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana,
the Republican vice-presidential candidate, declined to appear on Mr.
Trump’s behalf at a party gathering in Wisconsin and offered him
something of an ultimatum on Saturday afternoon.
Mr.
Pence said in a statement that he was “offended by the words and
actions described by Donald Trump” in the video, and cast Mr. Trump’s
second debate with Hillary Clinton, on Sunday, as an urgent moment to
turn around the campaign.
Election 20163:02Donald Trump’s Lewd Comments About Women
Video
Donald Trump’s Lewd Comments About Women
In a 2005 recording obtained by The
Washington Post, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee,
talks about women in vulgar terms to Billy Bush, then the host of
“Access Hollywood.”
Publish Date October 7, 2016.
Photo by Mark Makela for The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
“I
do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them,” Mr. Pence said,
adding, “We pray for his family and look forward to the opportunity he
has to show what is in his heart when he goes before the nation tomorrow
night.”
By
Saturday evening, no fewer than 36 Republican members of Congress and
governors who had not previously ruled out supporting Mr. Trump
disavowed his candidacy, an unprecedented desertion by the institutional
Republican Party of its own standard-bearer just a month before Election Day.
The
growing wall of opposition recalled the determination of the party
establishment this year to deny Mr. Trump the nomination in the first
place. He easily swatted away that effort, but Mr. Trump now finds
himself in a far more precarious state. Facing a more vast and diverse
electorate, his lightly organized campaign was already listing before
the videotape was released.
Aides
described Mr. Trump as shaken, watching news coverage of the video with
a mix of disbelief and horror. Shortly after midnight, he had released a
videotaped statement,
saying, “I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released
today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them.”
Refusing to Drop Out
In
a brief telephone interview on Saturday, he shrugged off the calls to
leave, saying he would “never drop out of this race in a million years.”
“I
haven’t heard from anyone saying I should drop out, and that would
never happen, never happen,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s not the kind of
person I am. I am in this until the end.”
Far from sounding rattled, Mr. Trump insisted that he could still prevail in November.
“Oh,
yeah, we can win — we will win,” he said. “We have tremendous support. I
think a lot of people underestimate how loyal my supporters are.”
A
couple of hours later, the campaign released a statement from his wife,
Melania. “The words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to
me,” she said. “This does not represent the man that I know.”
“I hope people will accept his apology, as I have, and focus on the important issues facing our nation and the world,” she said.
But
the situation had grown so dire that many in the party were all but
pleading with him to withdraw and let Mr. Pence serve as the
presidential nominee. On Saturday afternoon, Senator John Thune of South
Dakota, the chairman of the Republican Conference, became the most
senior Republican to call on Mr. Trump to make way for Mr. Pence.
The
exodus began late Friday night when a handful of Utah Republicans who
said they would support Mr. Trump indicated that they could no longer
tolerate their nominee.
But
it was not until a pair of conservative women, Representatives Barbara
Comstock of Virginia and Martha Roby of Alabama, implored Mr. Trump to
withdraw that previously hesitant Republicans stepped forward to reject
Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
Kelly
Ayotte of New Hampshire was the first Republican senator facing a
competitive re-election to say she would no longer back Mr. Trump,
announcing in a statement that she would write in Mr. Pence for
president instead.
“I’m
a mom and an American first, and I cannot and will not support a
candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women,”
she wrote on Twitter.
Ms.
Ayotte was joined just hours later by Mr. McCain, who is also running
for re-election, and Representative Joe Heck of Nevada, who is locked in
a close race for the Senate seat now held by Harry Reid, the Democratic
minority leader, who is retiring.
It
was an admission that Mr. Trump now posed an immediate threat to their
own candidacies and that, to have any chance to survive, they had to
risk angering his ardent supporters. At a party gathering on Saturday in
Wisconsin, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who had disinvited Mr. Trump and said
he was “sickened” by the video, was greeted with a few boos, and Mr.
Heck was both jeered and applauded when he announced to a crowd in
Nevada that he was not backing the presidential nominee.
Mr.
Ryan told his crowd he would not be discussing “the elephant in the
room,” the 2005 video showing a bus that had Mr. Trump aboard, and
included an audio recording of him privately bantering with other men.
Mr.
Trump, then newly married to Ms. Trump, crassly boasted about groping
women’s genitals, vulgarly commented on their bodies and generally
described women as sex objects who could not resist his advances.
In
his video statement released early Saturday, Mr. Trump said: “Anyone
who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was
wrong, and I apologize.”
“I
pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never, ever let you down,”
he added, before ending the message with a promise to bring up the sex
scandals of Bill Clinton’s presidency and Hillary Clinton’s response to
them.
Concern at Trump Tower
Inside
Trump Tower, though, Mr. Trump’s defiant public responses belied the
reality of a 24-hour period in which he was alternately angry and
distressed, according to two people with direct knowledge of his
behavior who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Mr.
Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, initially expressed skepticism
upon hearing that such a recording existed, saying those comments did
not sound like him. When Mr. Trump heard the tape played, he
acknowledged it was him, but he believed the fallout would not be
dramatic.
Mr. Pence, however, was dismayed, and called into Trump headquarters on Friday night to urge Mr. Trump to apologize.
On
Saturday morning, Mr. Pence called Mr. Trump and told him he had to
handle the next 48 hours alone because he did not think he would be an
effective surrogate.
Mr. Trump, after monitoring television coverage, realized he was becoming isolated by his party.
Mr.
Trump’s aides did not explicitly ask top advisers and allies to do
their usual defense of Mr. Trump’s comments, according to one person
briefed on the discussions, but they did ask people to stand by his
side. A few supporters did, including Ben Carson; the conservative radio
host Laura Ingraham; and Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the wealthy father
and daughter who are perhaps Mr. Trump’s most important backers, and who said in a statement that they considered the video “locker room braggadocio.”
“America
is finally fed up and disgusted with its political elite,” they said.
“Trump is channeling this disgust, and those among the political elite
who quake before the boombox of media blather do not appreciate the
apocalyptic choice that America faces on Nov. 8.”
Two
of Mr. Trump’s most prominent supporters — Gov. Chris Christie of New
Jersey and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York — went to Trump
Tower around noon to huddle with Mr. Trump and try to get in some debate
preparation.
In the afternoon, more damaging news hit the web and cable television, with a CNN report on the numerous lewd and tasteless comments he had made over the years on “The Howard Stern Show.”
Just
before 5 p.m., Mr. Trump emerged for about five minutes, briskly
striding through his gilded lobby to a waiting crowd of supporters on
the sidewalk. He pumped his right fist in the air as fans surrounded
him.
“Hundred percent,” Mr. Trump told reporters who yelled questions about whether he would stay in the race.
Mr.
Pence flew from Indianapolis to a fund-raising event in Rhode Island,
where he told supporters that the election was about more than “one
man,” said Joseph A. Trillo, the chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign in the
state. Over hors d’oeuvres in a Newport mansion, Mr. Pence offered a
pep talk without making direct mention of the day’s dire events.
“He used the terminology that it’s a movement and it’s bigger than Donald Trump,” Mr. Trillo said.
At
the same time, leading Republicans were demanding that the Republican
National Committee, which has been helping the Trump campaign
financially and organizationally, abandon Mr. Trump and turn its
attention to salvaging other candidates down the ballot.
Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said the committee should no longer “defend the indefensible.”
He called on Reince Priebus, the party chairman, to force Mr. Trump off the ticket — or face the consequences.
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“The
chairman of the R.N.C. must look out for the good of the party as a
whole, so he should be working to get him to step down,” Mr. Dent said.
“If he can’t, then he should step down.”
A Down-Ballot Effect
The
committee remained silent on Saturday as members of Congress began
fleeing from Mr. Trump, not responding to news media inquiries and,
senior Republican officials said, not coordinating with other campaign
organizations. However, one senior Republican official said Mr. Priebus
was deeply distressed. He went to Trump Tower in the afternoon to talk
to Mr. Trump.
Powerful
donors and business interests signaled that they would redirect their
attention to down-ballot candidates. Republican power brokers had hoped
until recently that Mr. Trump might make a credible showing in the
presidential election, aiding the party in its other crucial races.
But
Republicans now say that their worst fears have come to pass, as Mr.
Trump has unraveled in a series of missteps after his first debate with
Mrs. Clinton.
Even
before Mr. Trump’s 2005 comments came to light, internal Republican
polling showed him losing ground among three groups that had long been
wary of his candidacy: independents, women, and voters with college
degrees.
That
slide is likely to accelerate now, Republicans said, potentially
sending voters fleeing toward Democrats or convincing them that they
should stay home on Nov. 8. Either outcome would be ruinous for
Republican candidates beyond the presidential race.
“It
will be difficult in the extreme for him to recover from this, but the
biggest impact is likely to be its effect on all the down-ballot races,”
said Fred Malek, the finance chairman of the Republican Governors
Association, who called Mr. Trump’s comments “beyond disgusting.”
“If
they pull the plug on support for Trump,” he said, “the vast majority
of voters will certainly understand that and most will respect it.”
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