Asked to respond during Sunday’s presidential debate to a leaked video of Donald Trump bragging about his celebrity status allowing him to kiss and grope women without their consent, Hillary Clinton said it showed Trump was unfit to be president.
Clinton characterized the comments from the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, which were caught on a hot mic, as typical of Trump’s behavior in the past.
“Like everyone else, I spent a lot of time thinking over the last 48 hours about what we heard and saw,” Clinton said. “You know, with prior Republican nominees, for president, I disagreed with them. Politics, policies, principles. But I never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different.”
“What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women. What he thinks about women. What he does to women,” Clinton said. “And he has said that the video doesn’t represent who he is.”
“But I think it’s clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly what he is,” Clinton continued. “Because we’ve seen this throughout the campaign. We have seen him insult women. We’ve seen him rate women on their appearance. Ranking them from one to ten. We’ve seen him embarrass women on TV and on Twitter. We saw him after the first debate spend nearly a week denigrating a former miss universe in the harshest, most personal terms, so, yes, this is who Donald Trump is.”
The Democratic nominee then further detailed Trump’s other attacks on minorities throughout the campaign.
“But it’s not only women and it’s not only this video that raises questions about his fitness to be our president,” she said. “Because he has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and others.”
“So, this is who Donald Trump is and the question for us, the question our country must answer is that this is not who we are,” she added.
