“And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
In 2005, Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about groping women while talking to Billy Bush, who was then cohosting Access Hollywood. In October 2016, the tape of the conversation was released by the Washington Post, igniting a firestorm of condemnation and disgust. Bush, who was by then cohosting the Today show, was fired as a result. In November 2016, Donald Trump was elected president anyway.
In 2024, as Trump runs for president a third time, some voters — the youngest of whom were only 10 years old when the tape first broke — are stumbling across the Access Hollywood tape for the first time.
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Soleil Golden, a 22-year-old clinical research assistant and creator who goes by @toxicthotsyndrome on TikTok and has 591.5k followers, posted a video of her and fellow creator @awalmartparkinglot reacting to the tape. “I moved on her like a b*tch,” Trump can be heard saying as the two TikTokers shake their heads, cover their eyes, and hold their fingers to their temples as though they have a migraine. “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.”
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Golden, who was 14 when the tape was first released, says she decided to make the video because she feels like there are people who haven’t heard the total audio “in the full extent of just how depraved it is.” (Though Trump initially apologized for the tape, he later questioned whether it was him on the tape at all, saying, “We don’t think that was my voice.”)
“It’s super concerning that so many people like to paint Trump as a family man,” Golden tells Teen Vogue. “And he and Vance have tried to create this image of the importance of the American family unit, and that’s why they’re trying to get rid of a lot of reproductive health care services and facilities, if God forbid, they win the election.”
