Rudolph W. Giuliani, Donald Trump, and Bill Clinton attend the 2008 Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation Golf Classic at Trump National Golf Club on July 14, 2008 in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Rick Odell/Getty Images Donald Trump released an apology statement that attempted to justify a lewd audio and video tape with Billy Bush about women that emerged Friday.

In the recording from 2005, Trump boasted to television personality Billy Bush about being able to "grab" women "by the p----" because "when you're a star they let you do it." The recording was picked up by a hot mic.

"This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago," Trump said in the statement. "Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended."

Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has often used former President Bill Clinton's past with women to attack Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival.

The tape was recorded several months after Trump married his third wife, Melania. Trump and Bush were aboard a bus and were arriving on the set of "Days of Our Lives" to tape a segment for Trump's upcoming cameo on the soap opera.

The tape began with Trump discussing a failed attempt to seduce a woman.

"I did try and f--- her," Trump said. "She was married. ... And I moved on her very heavily."

He also talked about how his fame helped him pick up women.

"When you're a star they let you do it," Trump said. "You can do anything. ... Grab them by the p----. You can do anything."

Allan Smith contributed to this report.</s>WASHINGTON - Donald Trump issued an apology on Friday, Oct. 7, after the release of a video in which the Republican presidential candidate was recorded on an open microphone in 2005 talking in vulgar terms about trying to have sex with women.

"This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course - not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended,” Trump said in a statement released by his campaign.

The video, released in a Washington Post story, was recorded while Trump was speaking with TV host Billy Bush of "Access Hollywood" while they were about to tape a segment about a planned cameo appearance by the New York businessman on the soap opera "Days of Our Lives," the Post reported.
• California billionaire pumps another $1.4M into N.D. Marsy's Law measure

Trump has faced repeated criticism for his comments about women, most recently involving his attacks on a former beauty queen with a vague and unsubstantiated allegation about a sex tape in predawn Twitter posts that prompted Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to denounce him as "unhinged."

In a statement, Trump said, "This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course - not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended."</s>Trump talks about an attempt to seduce a woman, but not succeeding at it.

"I did try and f-- her. She was married," Trump said. At the time of the "Access Hollywood" taping, Trump was married to current wife Melania, but it is unclear when the incident that he was describing took place.

After Trump and Bush notice Arianna Zucker, an actress, Bush makes a comment about her being "hot as a--."

Trump says, "I got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I am automatically attracted to beautiful ... It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait."

"And when you are a star they let you do it. You can do anything."

In a statement, Trump said, "This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course - not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended."</s>Michael D'Antonio is the author of the new book , "The Truth About Trump." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

Donald Trump didn't apologize for insisting the Central Park Five were guilty, years after their exoneration. He didn't apologize for insisting the President of the United States wasn't an American. He didn't apologize for his hurtful comments about two Gold Star parents or about an Indiana-born judge of Mexican heritage. Or about immigrants or women or people with disabilities.

But after The Washington Post revealed Friday a tape that caught Trump bragging about being a sexual predator, the Republican candidate issued a statement in which he said, " I apologize if anyone was offended."

In the discussion, laced with profanity, one of the milder elements of Trump's remarks was the phrase, "I moved on her like a bitch." He was, at the time, the father of four and just months into his marriage to the former Melania Knauss, a model.

In addition to using the timeworn caveat "if anyone was offended," Trump modified his apology with the excuse that he had merely indulged in "locker room banter."

He also tried to divert attention to his opponent Hillary Clinton's husband. "Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course," said Trump in a written statement, adding, "not even close."

Setting aside the weaseling modifiers, the smear of Clinton, and the fact that Trump must have hung out in the locker room with some pretty awful men, his expression of regret was nevertheless a milestone.

"He was doing OK," recalled Trump, "'til he said he was sorry."

But most of all, he wanted to know if Trump would ever apologize for his years-long effort to delegitimize President Obama by repeatedly suggesting he was not born in the United States.

Having dragged the country and the President through years of false accusations, Trump had the opportunity to apologize in September, when he summoned the press to an announcement related to this issue. He spent nearly a half hour listening to veterans praise him and then quickly admitted, "Barack Obama was born in the United States, period."

No apology was made. Instead, Trump repeated the false claims that the president's birthplace had been in doubt, and that Hillary Clinton had started the whole controversy.

The worst aspect of the "birther" controversy was the way that it consigned the president to the status of "other" in a way that was inherently racist. No previous presidents -- they were all white -- were subjected to such a concerted effort to suggest they were foreign-born. Similarly, none had heard their Christian faith challenged in the way that Trump challenged Obama's by wondering, aloud, if his records indicated he was Muslim.

More recently, Trump refused to acknowledge a mistake, or apologize for inflaming the public outrage over the shocking rape and assault of woman in Central Park in 1989. At the time, Trump bought full-page advertisements in New York newspapers to declare, "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!"

In the ad, which bore his signature, Trump referenced "roving bands of wild criminals" and said, "I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and when they kill they should be executed for their crimes."

He also told CNN's Larry King that year, "Maybe hate is what we need" in response to the crime in the park.

Instead of taking responsibility and acknowledging reality, Trump said, "They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same."

As he often does, Trump offered Marquez only the most convenient facts to justify a simplistic position on a complex issue and avoid admitting he might have done something wrong. The Central Park Five, as they are known, did confess to various crimes under extended police questioning and implicated each other. However they were subjected to improper interrogation techniques, without access to parents or lawyers, and their so-called confessions were without merit.

In standing by his original position on the Central Park case, Trump exhibited a variation on his no apologies strategy that might be called "doubling down."

Like a gambler who shows his confidence by adding to a bet, Trump has often repeated outrageous comments and impolitic observations in order to show that he is a straight-talking person who won't be politically correct. He has done this with his false claim that he opposed the war in Iraq when he didn't, and when he said that Obama was the founder of the ISIS terrorist group and then repeated the claim.

Why did Trump change course this time, pulling a Jimmy the Greek by admitting he did something wrong? It's likely that among the people he offended are his wife, his children, his running mate and millions of voters. Also, the existence of the audio recording makes his behavior impossible to deny.

Finally, he had no option for doubling down. Not even Trump could hear himself saying such awful things and then tell the world he would say them again, and add something worse.

Should the limited mea culpa change the way we regard Trump? The caviling tells us we should not. By offering excuses, and pointing a finger at Bill Clinton, he has maintained his standing as a dangerous and juvenile 70-year-old man.</s>Video of a lewd conversation Donald Trump had with then-Access Hollywood host Billy Bush during a 2005 bus ride to a studio where the real estate mogul was to tape an episode of Days of Our Lives is turning out to be the bombshell October surprise of the fall campaign season so far.

The video, revealed by The Washington Post this afternoon, captures GOP presidential nominee Trump revealing some of his feelings about how to treat women to whom he's attracted.

"You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them," he says. "It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait."

"And when you’re a star, they let you do it," Trump says. "You can do anything."

"Whatever you want," says a man who sounds like Bush.

"Grab them by the pussy,” Trump says. "You can do anything."

In a statement today Trump painted the conversation as private "locker room banter" that paled in comparison to some of things Trump says he's heard President Bill Clinton say on the golf course. " ... Not even close," the candidate said.

"I apologize if anyone was offended," Trump stated.

Bush, now co-host of NBC's Today, said he's "very sorry" for his taped remarks. "Obviously I'm embarrassed and ashamed," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "It's no excuse, but this happened eleven years ago — I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along."

The "hot-mic" remarks were made as Trump rode an Access Hollywood "Access Across America Tour" bus on a studio lot and after he disembarked to head to the taping. At the time it appears Days of Our Lives was recorded at The Burbank Studios, run by NBC in Burbank.

Reaction to the video was swift and damning, with Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, saying on Twitter, "This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president."

Women's advocacy group UltraViolet called Trump "a dangerous, predatory misogynist and this video further proves that he should never be allowed to step foot in the White House," according to a statement.

The Latino Victory Fund weighed in, too.

"We are appalled and disturbed by Trump’s disgusting, piggish comments towards women," said César J. Blanco, the organization's interim director. "Trump is not pathologically capable of treating women like human beings. His misogynistic behavior is a disturbing pattern that we have seen time and time again and that we cannot continue to tolerate or ignore. If we ignore his attacks against women, we will certainly undo decades of hard work and hard-fought battles for women’s rights. Our nation cannot thrive and prosper if women’s civil rights are not guaranteed, and we all have the responsibility to condemn Trump and any man who threatens women’s rights."</s>“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”

— Donald Trump, apologizing(?) for leaked footage of him talking to Billy Bush in 2005, saying that, among other things, “when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything… Grab them by the p–y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

Ah, yes, just locker room banter. As far as I can tell, the conversations in men’s locker rooms all must go something like this.

First man: Phew! Thank goodness. It was exhausting to have to walk through the world talking to all those women as though they were just people, like us. Clearly, they are not. They are women. Their bodies exist for us to look at and do sex to.

Second Man: I do sex constantly! I obtained a great deal of sex today from the many walking sex dispensers that are to be found drifting through the world! I must obtain as much as possible from the best-looking dispensers so that I can win respect from fellow men like you!

First Man: I will, if you will promise not to take paternity leave!

Second Man: I promise! Boy, I am exhausted! I saw a woman at work today in clothes, and I thought about sex. I wish that she had worn different clothes so that this would not happen. Sex is my right as a human being, and I do not understand why it would be withheld ever, under any circumstances.

Third Man: That is a violent term.

Second Man: I bet you slay a lot of women.

First Man: (winking) At least 30. (winking more) I left their remains along the highway. (winking more) Their families will not find them.

Third Man: This is kind of violent, and I am not sure it is just a double entendre any more.

Second Man: Trevor, please. What are you, a GIRL? This is more of that political correctness that is ruining everything.

First Man: Thank you for saying something. We need to preserve places like this. Every time women come into male spaces, they are ruined.

Second Man: I agree. It is too bad that my exes are crazy.

First Man: All of them?

Second Man: Yes, 100 percent. It is amazing how every woman I date turns out to have severe mental problems the moment she ceases to date me.

It must be nice to have a magical room where you can go, drop your pants and pretend for a few glorious hours that women are not people.

A repellent, but remarkably unexamined, idea that we carry around in society with us is the notion that somehow this is OK. That this is just boys being boys. That we must give boys a safe, unpolluted, secret space where they can stop the exhausting charade of acting as though women contain the same internal worlds that they do themselves.

This is what it gets back to: the idea that men are people, and women are just women.

Of course what Donald Trump said is awful. But, as Kelly Oxford noted on Twitter, it’s the fact that Billy Bush just nodded along that gives us rape culture.

It’s the idea that boys will be boys, and it does not matter what you leave in your wake, because you are the protagonist of this story, and the girl is just . . . an appealing body, to be discussed and dissected at leisure when you are back in one of the myriad locker rooms of daily life. If that.

This is egregious, but it is not isolated. It’s every time the Serious Concern is that a young man’s life might theoretically be ruined — by the act of punishing him for what he did to ruin someone else’s life. It’s every time someone talks about how awful something would be if it happened to your wife or your daughter or your mother — instead of just to you, to a person. Every time women’s existence is limited to their relationship to men. Every time women are treated merely as gatekeepers of sex, a resource that is somehow obtainable without the enthusiastic participation of another person who might have opinions on the matter. Every time men don’t read books by women, every time boys can’t find it in themselves to identify with a female protagonist. Every time people look at a movie with one woman in it and nine men and say “yes, this seems fine.” Every time we say to little girls in countless ways that what matters is how you look, not what you think.

Some of these things seem smaller than others, but every tiny detail adds up to a terrifying denial of the idea that women have the same kind of internal reality that men do. And that gets us to conversations like this and thoughts like this.

That’s the world where Donald Trump lives: a world where men are people, and women are women. Not quite people. Something different. That’s why Trump was always famously telling female employees that a man was better than a woman, but that a good woman is better than 10 good men.

Would you say this about any other category of person and treat it like a compliment? No, of course you would not.

He lives in a world where the highest compliment you can give a woman — even your own daughter — is that you would sleep with her. And it’s not creepy, because — well, what else might a woman possibly want?

That is the awful thing about this conversation. It is not that it is especially lewd, although it is. It is not that it is violent and awful and wrong, although it is. It is the fact that it is, within certain circles, still quite normal. It’s the fact that Donald Trump used, as a defense, the idea that he’d said much worse.

It’s the fact that when Billy Bush heard him, Bush did not stop the bus they were riding on and say, “MY GOD, MAN, YOU ARE SICK! THIS IS SICK! THIS IS AWFUL!” He nodded. He laughed. You had the sense that Donald Trump could have escalated still further — past non-consensually grabbing people by the p–y (that’s sexual assault, by the way) — and into building himself a coat from female skin before Bush would have begun pushing back.

And even then, he might just have giggled.

Alexandra Petri writes The Washington Post’s ComPost blog. Follow her on Twitter: @petridishes

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
Donald Trump issues a statement calling the conversation "locker room banter" and writes, "I apologize if anyone was offended."