Donald Trump’s allies rode to his rescue late Friday and attempted to downplay predatory and lewd comments about women he made in a leaked video from 2005, which gained serious media attention Friday after it was published by the Washington Post.
Trump’s former campaign manager and current CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski called into the network to say that the comments were not a big deal because America is picking a president, not a “Sunday school teacher.”
“I think what this comes down to, clearly this is not how women should be spoken about. But we’re not choosing a Sunday school teacher here, and what we know about Donald Trump, this is 12 years ago, this audiotape,” he said. “It does not reflect or bring to mind the Donald Trump I spent 18 months with traveling. I never heard anything like this out of him.”
He went on to say that the revelation should not be enough to make voters switch their support to Hillary Clinton, and deflected attention to the speeches Clinton gave to Wall Street firms, arguing that there could be a “bombshell” in the unreleased transcripts.
“We don’t have any understanding of what Hillary Clinton has said in those meetings with Wall Street where she was paid for these speeches. For all we know, the same things are being said in that regard,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s the case, and I don’t think that the Trump campaign wanted this or knew this was available to come out during October. I’m sure that would be the case strategically. But what we don’t know is what Hillary Clinton has said in some of these speeches because she refuses to release the audio. Do we have a bombshell in there? I don’t know the answer.”
A spokesman for Trump’s former opponent and current advisor Ben Carson told BuzzFeed simply that the “flesh can be weak.”
“Hey, the flesh can be weak, my man,” Armstrong Williams told the site.
“Dr. Carson believes that people can change and be better,” he added, according to BuzzFeed. “You know, these things happen. I’m sure somebody could find a video of Bill Clinton talking like this — are we gonna say Bill Clinton was the same person as president that he is today? Obviously not.”
Ralph Reed, a member of Trump’s religious advisory board and the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told CNN’s Ashley Killough that he believes Trump’s comments rank “pretty low” as concerns for voters.
“I’ve listened to the tape, my view is that people of faith are voting for president on issues like who will defend and protect unborn life, defund Planned Parenthood, grow the economy and create jobs, and oppose the Iran nuclear deal,” Reed said. “I think a 10-year-old-tape of a private conversation ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of the their concerns.”
Trump’s Virginia Campaign chair said people are more concerned with the economy than with Trump’s sexually aggressive remarks on women, according to WUSA’s Garrett Haake.
“This is the kind of stuff that nobody cares about,” he said. “People are worried about the economy.”
Former Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) tried to spin the release of the old tape as a Clinton campaign attack. There’s no evidence the Clinton campaign leaked the tape to the Washington Post.
“Hillary Clinton wanted to make sure that this is what America would be talking about, so they did their opposition research, this is what they had,” she told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “But quite honestly, I think that when it comes to Sunday night, you’re going to hear Donald Trump talking about the issues, no matter how this comes up, she wants to make sure Anderson Cooper or someone in the audience brings this up. But quite honestly, I think she had a really bad news day herself.”
