In 2005, as Donald Trump prepared for a shoot on "Days of Our Lives," a hot microphone caught Trump telling reporter Billy Bush that when Trump sees a beautiful woman, his response is to "just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. ... You can do anything."
Eleven years later, Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, and his words have come back to haunt him. His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, took the high road during the second presidential debate Sunday night, declining to use the words "sexual assault" to describe Trump's self-described behavior toward women. Even as Trump attempted to deflect attention from his words by accusing her husband, former President Bill Clinton, of sexually abusing multiple women, Hillary Clinton alternately smiled and glowered at Trump.
But that doesn't mean the Clinton camp intends to remain quiet. In an interview on my radio show, Clinton's running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, didn't mince words.
"I think there is no doubt that the behavior described in the (Trump) video is sexual assault," Kaine told me. "You can't grab people's genitals. That's sexual assault. I mean, it is clear. And I very much dismiss a Donald Trump who's trying to say, 'Well, this is locker room talk,' or a Rudy Guiliani: 'You know, this is kind of what men do.'
"No, it's not. It's what sexual abusers do, but it's not what men do."
I wholeheartedly agree. Talking about grabbing women by the genitals without their permission is not locker-room talk. It's sociopath talk.
It's the kind of behavior that requires a callous disregard for a person's feelings, a lack of remorse or shame and unchecked ego. It requires one to exhibit the kind of antisocial behavior that Trump has exhibited throughout the presidential campaign.
"If it had only been this, it would be even hard to excuse as, 'Well, maybe he's bad, and he's better now,' but it's a whole pattern of things," Kaine said. "Whether it's against women or against immigrants or against Muslims. Whether it's perpetrating the bigoted lie that President Obama was not a U.S. citizen, there's a whole series of things that he's done that really demonstrates an incredibly divisive personality, and, in my opinion, that's the last thing we need in this country."
For me, though, it goes beyond Trump's divisiveness. Though he has run a campaign fueled by bigotry and spouted rhetoric that has widened the racial and ethnic fault lines in our country, something about his behavior is far worse.
Trump has consistently refused to take responsibility for his actions.
Don't tell me that you're just doing what men do when it comes to sexist rhetoric, yet refuse to do what men do where responsibility is concerned.
Men fight for what we believe in, but we also apologize when we're wrong. Men take responsibility for their shortcomings without pointing the finger at others.
Men don't trot out women who have been victimized by others and say, "I know what I said was bad, but wait until you hear what these women have to say about this guy."
Men don't do that. But Trump does, and that's troubling.
"It's extremely serious," Kaine said. "It's more than words, and, in some ways, Solomon, it's even more than actions. The actions are bad, but it betrays a sense about women. I really believe that Donald Trump can't look at a woman and see her as an equal.
"And it's funny that, here we are, in a race where, for the first time, a major party has nominated a woman, and there could be the first woman president. But we're also dealing with a candidate who has a very difficult time looking at a woman and viewing her kind of as an equal person. He's gonna rate her on her looks or _ there's just a whole series of things about Donald that in some ways, sadly, did not make this tape release Friday all that surprising.
"And then in terms of how we're looking at it, I think Hillary said on the stage during the debate the other night, 'This just shows who Donald Trump is.'"
ABOUT THE WRITER
Solomon Jones is a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Readers may email him at sj@solomonjones.com.
