A Florida man is accused of groping a female passenger while on a flight Sunday from Houston to Albuquerque and later telling authorities that the president of the United States “says it's OK to grab women by their private parts.”
Bruce Michael Alexander, 49, of Tampa made his initial appearance in federal court Monday in Albuquerque on a charge of abusive sexual contact. It wasn't immediately clear if he had an attorney.
According to a criminal complaint, a woman told authorities the man behind her touched her twice and that she told him to stop and asked to change seats.
As rumors swirl that Donald Trump is attempting to take back his admission that he said "Grab'em by the pussy" on video tape, Billy Bush, former host of Access Hollywood and The Today Show, reflects on witnessing Trump's infamous candid camera moment for The New York Times.
Bush begins:
He said it. “Grab ’em by the pussy.”
Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real.
We now know better.
Recently I sat down and read an article dating from October of 2016; it was published days after my departure from NBC, a time when I wasn’t processing anything productively. In it, the author reviewed the various firsthand accounts about Mr. Trump that, at that point, had come from 20 women.
Some of what Natasha Stoynoff, Rachel Crooks, Jessica Leeds and Jill Harth alleged involved forceful kissing. Ms. Harth said he pushed her up against a wall, with his hands all over her, trying to kiss her.
“He was relentless,” she said. “I didn’t know how to handle it.” Her story makes the whole “better use some Tic Tacs” and “just start kissing them” routine real. I believe her.
Kristin Anderson said that Mr. Trump reached under her skirt and “touched her vagina through her underwear” while they were at a New York nightclub in the 1990s. That makes the “grab ’em by the pussy” routine real. I believe her.
President Trump is currently indulging in some revisionist history, reportedly telling allies, including at least one United States senator, that the voice on the tape is not his. This has hit a raw nerve in me.
I can only imagine how it has reopened the wounds of the women who came forward with their stories about him, and did not receive enough attention. This country is currently trying to reconcile itself to years of power abuse and sexual misconduct. Its leader is wantonly poking the bear.
Read the full essay at The New York Times. As you'll recall, Billy Bush lost his job for being present during Trump's statement.
Even though Donald Trump admitted to the world that it was indeed him on the now infamous Access Hollywood "Grab'em by the pussy" video clip, the Donald is now trying to convince folks in private that it might not have been him.
The New York Timesreports that Trump's habit of creating "alternative facts" goes beyond the Access Hollywood tape.
In January, shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women’s genitals.
“We don’t think that was my voice,” Mr. Trump told the senator, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Since then, Mr. Trump has continued to suggest that the tape that nearly upended his campaign was not actually him, according to three people close to the president.
Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the “Access Hollywood” tape are part of his lifelong habit of attempting to create and sell his own version of reality. Advisers say he continues to privately harbor a handful of conspiracy theories that have no grounding in fact.
In recent months, they say, Mr. Trump has used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has also repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote last year because of widespread voter fraud, according to advisers and lawmakers.
Mr. Trump’s friends did not bother denying that the president was creating an alternative version of events. One Republican lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said that Mr. Trump’s false statements had become familiar to people over time. The president continues to boast of winning districts that he did not in fact win, the lawmaker said, and of receiving 52 percent of the women’s vote, even though exit polls show that 42 percent of women supported him.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump's "support" for Alabama Republican Roy Moore (if you can call it that since Trump won't use his name) stems in part from Trump's own experience with sexual misconduct allegations.
Although, are they allegations if the president copped to them? Like the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape that captured Trump boasting he likes to "grab'em by the pussy?"
According to the NYT, Trump has now asserted that that tape is fake.
He sees the calls for Mr. Moore to step aside as a version of the response to the now-famous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitalia, and the flood of groping accusations against him that followed soon after. He suggested to a senator earlier this year that it was not authentic, and repeated that claim to an adviser more recently. (In the hours after it was revealed in October 2016, Mr. Trump acknowledged that the voice was his, and he apologized.)
As everyone in the world knows, just hours after the video surfaced Trump issued a statement which read, in part, "I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize."
This morning on CNN, host Chris Cuomo was gobsmacked that the Donald would even attempt to claim "fake" over a year later when he acknowledged the veracity of the tape at the time.
“I think it is way more troubling than it is getting credit for,” Cuomo said of Trump’s newly reported denials. “I don’t think this is an offhand comment. I think he believes this will work with people. That if he doubts its authenticity. That is him. On. That. Tape! Okay? That’s who it is. He said what he said. He even kind of owned it.”
Some folks believe the new "fake" story is Trump's preparation for any new video or audio that may be revealed by the investigation being headed up by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump is getting ready to call any and all evidence against him "fake."
By the way, if Trump believes in Roy Moore so much, why isn't he campaigning for the guy before the election? Other than he's probably seen the polls and doesn't like the political calculation...?
BREAKING: White House official: Trump will not campaign for embattled Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore before Dec. 12 election.
In his 60 Minutes interview with Charlie Rose last night, former White House strategist Steve Bannon admits NJ Gov. Chris Christie was taken out of contention for a cabinet post for not standing by Donald Trump when the now infamous "Grab 'em by the pussy" video surfaced.
“Christie, because of Billy Bush weekend, was not looked at for a cabinet position,” Bannon said in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Thursday. “I told him the plane leaves at 11-o-clock in the morning. If you make the plane, you make the team. He didn’t make the plane.”
Watch below.
“[New Jersey Gov.] Christie, because of Billy Bush weekend, was not looked at for a Cabinet position,” Steve Bannon tells @CharlieRosepic.twitter.com/zgKbpOfAiJ
The Hollywood Reporter has the first in-depth interview with former Today Show host Billy Bush since his departure from the show thanks to the now-infamous "Grab'em by the pussy" video with Donald Trump came to light.
Just an excerpt:
Take us back to your days at Access Hollywood when this happened. How important was Trump to the show?
It was 2005, the second season of The Apprentice. The first season ended with 44 million viewers watching. It was a bona fide television phenomenon. So he was the biggest star, not just on the network with which Access Hollywood is affiliated but on TV, period. And so I spent a lot of time with Trump. He was my main assignment. He was the core of my job for a period of time there, because if we could get him three times a week in exclusive-type situations, he was always going to say something that was headline-worthy. And Access Hollywood was certainly interested in that. So that was my job, and I did it well. I got access to Trump. And in my job, there's a lot of downtime, and there are off-camera moments where you have a short period of time to, in a chameleonlike way, connect with people. If it's Martha Stewart, I would tell her about the new organic garden that I just started growing in my backyard.
And with Trump?
With Donald, there wasn't much interaction. He sort of talks and performs, and everybody reacts. And the topics were usually golf, gossip or women. And boy, do I wish this was a golf day. But I always had a nervous energy through these situations because he also decided a lot of times from day to day, moment to moment, who he liked, who was in and who was out, and my job was to remain in. I needed to be in, or maybe I'd be out. So that was the Trump environment. Looking back on what was said on that bus, I wish I had changed the topic. I wish I had said: "Does anyone want water?" or "It looks like it's gonna rain." He liked TV and competition. I could've said, "Can you believe the ratings on whatever?" I didn't have the strength of character to do it.
You'll recall that when Donald Trump's now infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" hot-mic video appeared, many of his surrogates tried to blame his language on rap music.
Cue rapper will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and Funny Or Die to bring his rap version of "Donald T Rump" to life.
"When I'm president I won't be like Obama / If anyone talks shit about me, I'll bomb 'em / I'm grabbin' that pussy like there's no tomorrow / And if we have problems with Russia, I'll bomb 'em," will.i.am rapped wearing a blond Trump wig.
Singer Liane V. steps in for Democrat Hillary Clinton, and just like Hillary, she trumps Trump's lowdown by going high:
"I'm a woman and I'm strong / And don't you forget it / Because I am intelligent / I'm somebody's daughter / I'm somebody's boss / I could be the next president / So give me the respect now!"
Throughout, will.i.am beats his chest with, “I’m a star ’cause I made it / I’m rich and I’m famous / Donald Trump said to grab you by the p—– / Donald Trump said to grab you by the p—–.”
It's not all funny parody though. Don't miss will.i.am's very serious message at the end of the video. "This is not a circus, a TV show or a movie. This is real life with real life problems. We need a leader that not only will lead America but will help heal the world," he said, adding "When you vote, please vote for the candidate that can do that, and it's obvious - it's Hillary."
