I really don't think Trump can drag himself back up from the damage that the Access Hollywood tape did, and I will use
this article to illustrate why. This is several women discussing the tape and what they think it "Reveals About This Election And Our Culture," and I think it reveals the mentality of the people who are writing astonished reactions to the leaked audio.
The astronomical distance by which it goes over their heads is amazing. You basically have a bunch of women explaining to a man what they assume men talk about in a men's locker room, and it's clear that the concept is so foreign to them that they can't even conceptualize it other than by drawing on their wholly different experiences and personal insecurities. They hear "locker room talk" and think "When I'm naked in the locker room I get dressed as quickly as possible because I'm embarrassed of my cellulite and just chuckle nervously if anyone tries to talk to me."
Consequently, Trump characterizing it as "locker room talk" only made it worse because people have their own connotation of what "locker room talk" is. Trump's main rhetorical problem is that he makes a lot of vague statements and then doesn't follow through on them to lead the listener to the conclusion that he wants them to come to, and therefore they just fill in the blanks with their personal biases. This works fine when you are speaking to your sympathetic base, because they will nod their heads and fill in the blanks with what they charitably assume that you
must have meant, but you can't control how any else contextualizes your words.
I was going to quote more from the article, but the above just represents so succinctly why his defense failed. Interestingly, the second woman comes close to explaining what "locker room talk" is by describing exactly what the men in the video are doing: self-aggrandizing. Anyone who knows the first thing about the sociology of male bonding would know that self-aggrandizing (and often exaggerated) anecdotes are a big part of that, and it doesn't stop when a man turns 18 (if anything, it gets worse). And yet the people they got to discuss the dialogue for this article expect that wealthy, confident men who are trying to relax before a recorded TV performance are just going to sit on the bus having a subdued conversation about strictly professional matters.
Worse still is the number of articles that I have seen, this one included, that characterize Trump's conversation as "condoning sexual assault" or "bragging about getting away with sexual assault." Again, these people don't understand male socialization, and their ignorant interpretation is what's going to dominate the narrative about his attempt to apologetically smooth-over the leaked audio: people who are so autistic that they think that Trump literally throws himself onto and starts kissing beautiful women the instant he sees them like he's some kind of cartoon villain, instead of it just being an absurd joke; or they hear him say "when you're a star, they let you do it" and immediately picture a frightened woman trembling under his tiny hands because they are afraid of him, and not just braggadocious bullshitting about how "I totally get tons of pussy because I'm rich and famous! Give me social validation!"
OK, fine, here's a bonus quote:
Bitch, she was the one who said "Actually, I should be in the middle." You've been an editor for
14 years and you can't even get a basic detail from the video right.
Oh wait:
I'm sure they loved having you there.
