Donald Trump boasted crudely about his sexual conquests in a 2005 audio recording made a few months after his marriage to Melania Trump, saying he sometimes got his way with women because he was "a star."
The recording, obtained by The Washington Post and released Friday, features the Republican presidential nominee making extraordinarily vulgar comments about women.
He is heard talking with Billy Bush of "Access Hollywood" as they were riding a private bus to the set of "Days of our Lives" for a Trump cameo.
"I moved on her and I failed _ I'll admit it," Trump is heard saying about an unidentified woman. Using a vulgar term, Trump says he tried to have sex with her and mentions that the woman was married at the time.
Trump then talks about taking the woman furniture shopping in an attempt to seduce her.
"She wanted to get some furniture," Trump says. "I said, 'I'll show you where they have some nice furniture.'"
He adds, "I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there. And she was married." He went on to say that her breasts were big and phony. "She's totally changed her look," Trump said.
It's unclear from the recording whether he was already married to Melania Trump when he says these events occurred.
Trump released a terse statement when the Post published the story.
"This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago," Trump said. "Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course _ not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended."
Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic opponent, reacted on Twitter: "This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president."
Release of the recording comes as Trump is trying to improve his dismal standing among female voters. Clinton, who would be the nation's first female president, was leading Trump among women 53 percent to 33 percent in a Quinnipiac poll released Friday.
To the dismay of fellow Republicans who fear he is hurting the party's down-ballot candidates in the Nov. 8 election, Trump has been attacking Clinton for "enabling" her husband's extramarital affairs.
Last weekend, Trump also accused Clinton of being disloyal to her husband, offering no evidence for the allegation.
In the 2005 recording, Trump boasts of how he likes to make advances on women.
"You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful _ I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait," he says. "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
He uses another vulgarity to describe how he gropes women in the crotch. "You can do anything," he says.
Trump's history of making derogatory remarks about women has dogged him for more than a year.
In the first GOP primary debate, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly asked him to explain why he'd called women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals."
Clinton and her allies have hammered him in television and radio ads for his caustic comments about women dating as far back as the 1980s. At their first debate last week in New York, Clinton castigated Trump for calling a Latina beauty pageant winner "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping."
Trump later criticized the woman and urged voters to check out a sex tape that she'd allegedly appeared in. There was no sex tape.
Earlier this week, Trump said some of his past comments about women were for purposes of "entertainment."
