(CNN) — Donald Trump bragged about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women in previously unaired footage from 2005 that surfaced on Friday.
Trump is heard discussing women in vulgar terms during off-camera banter during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood,”footage which was obtained by The Washington Post.
Trump dismissed the comments as “locker room banter” in a statement released by his campaign and sought to immediately deflect criticism onto the husband of his opponent Hillary Clinton.
The comments immediately raised the stakes for Sunday’s highly anticipated debate between Trump and Clinton. The Democratic nominee has spent months portraying Trump as demeaning toward women and the emergence of the remarks could hand her — and viewers in the town hall audience — more evidence to make that point.
The remarks prompted Trump — for the first time in his nearly 16-month campaign — to apologize.
“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 Friday.
Clinton’s campaign quickly condemned Trump over the remarks.
“This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president,” Clinton tweeted.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, campaigning in Las Vegas, said Trump’s comments “makes me sick to my stomach.”
“I don’t like to say the words that he’s used in the past when he calls women, ‘pigs, dogs and slobs’ … but this is behavior that’s just outrageous and so that there would be a news story that would have more statements like this of this kind, I mean, gosh, I’m sad to say that I’m not surprised,” Kaine said. “I should be surprised and shocked. I’m sad to say that I’m not.”
‘You can do anything’
“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,” Trump says in the recording.
“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”
“I did try and f— her. She was married,” Trump says in one portion of the footage published by the Post.
Trump then goes on to say that “when you’re a star … you can do anything.”
“Grab them by the p—y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”
