Donald Trump committed one of the most astonishing changes of subject in the history of language early in Sunday night’s debate when Anderson Cooper said “you described kissing women without their consent and grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women,” and asked “Do you understand that?” It’s safe to say that no, Trump does not understand that—or doesn’t care—based on this answer:
I didn’t say that at all, I don't think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk. I am not proud of it. I apologized to my family, I apologized to the American people. Certainly I am not proud of it. But this is locker room talk. You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads and frankly drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world
and they look and see, can you imagine the people that are frankly doing so well against us with ISIS and they look at our country and they see what's going on. Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it and I hate it, but it's locker room talk and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re gonna defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left, because of bad judgment. I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS. We should get on to much more important and bigger things.
Trump’s answer to a question about his own recorded bragging about sexual assault is that he didn’t say it, if he did say it it was only locker room talk, and ISIS ISIS ISIS. Content-free promise about knocking the hell out of ISIS, completely unsupported by any information or strategy. Women, your right to not be grabbed by Donald Trump or any other man is not an important issue. We shouldn’t even be talking about it. ISIS ISIS ISIS.
So we have a lie, a you didn’t understand the thing you all heard me say, a dismissal of sexual assault bragging as locker room banter, and a change of subject to something Trump explicitly says is more important than whether there’s a sexual predator on the ballot for the presidency.
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