Watch Donald Trump’s taped apology in response to leaked audio of his sexually explicit remarks about groping women
Trump had earlier shrugged off the leaked tape as ‘locker room banter’
After being caught on tape making shockingly crude comments about a married woman he tried to seduce, Donald Trump declared in a midnight video: “I was wrong and I apologise.” Yet he claimed the astonishing revelations amounted to “nothing more than a distraction” and argued his words were not nearly as egregious as former President Bill Clinton’s marital affairs.
“I’ve said some foolish things,” Trump said in a taped apology posted on his Facebook page. “But there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women.”
Turning to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Trump accused her of having “bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated” her husband’s “victims”.
Trump’s 90-second statement capped a jarring day that threatened to sink his presidential campaign and sent Republicans into a panic just over a month from Election Day.
Trump’s campaign released the one-and-a-half-minute video on the Republican nominee’s social media accounts. The video apology came hours after The Washington Post and NBC News posted a video from 2005 in which the Republican nominee brags about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who were not his wife.
Trump said: “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.”