{"id":256034,"date":"2016-10-08T10:02:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T10:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=256034"},"modified":"2016-10-08T10:02:28","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T10:02:28","slug":"trump-sorry-for-obscene-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=256034","title":{"rendered":"Trump &#8216;sorry&#8217; for obscene comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">US presidential candidate Donald Trump has apologised for obscene comments about women he made in a newly released videotape from 2005.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump said that &#8220;these words don&#8217;t reflect who I am&#8230; I apologise&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In the video, Mr Trump says &#8220;you can do anything&#8221; to women &#8220;when you&#8217;re a star&#8221; and brags about trying to grope and kiss women.<\/p>\n<p>Top Republicans condemned the comments. His election rival Hillary Clinton called them &#8220;horrific&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We cannot allow this man to become president,&#8221; she\u00a0posted on Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump&#8217;s 90-second statement on Saturday morning appeared to be his first full apology in a campaign laced with controversial remarks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve said and done things I regret,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Anyone who knows me knows these words don&#8217;t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologise.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve never said I&#8217;m a perfect person nor pretended to be someone I&#8217;m not. I pledge to be a better man tomorrow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, he also tried to deflect the impact by attacking former President Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Analysis &#8211; BBC North America reporter Anthony Zurcher<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The videotape release comes at a most inopportune time for the Republican nominee, who was trying to use his running mate&#8217;s well-received debate performance on Tuesday to reboot his campaign after a week of distractions and controversy. On Wednesday he told a local news interviewer that his previous offensive comments about women &#8211; which have dogged his campaign since the first Republican primary debate last August &#8211; were made for the &#8220;purpose of entertainment&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>That explanation doesn&#8217;t fit with the boorish, newly married Trump shown on the video privately boasting about his efforts to seduce a married woman and have his way with whomever he pleases.<\/p>\n<p>Now Mr Trump will enter Sunday&#8217;s debate with a new cloud hanging over his candidacy. It&#8217;s almost certain that one of the town hall participants will ask him about it. There may be no easy way to respond &#8211; but Mr Trump will have to find an acceptable answer. If he bungles it, nothing else he says during the 90-minute debate will matter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked and shamed his victims.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll discuss this in the coming days,&#8221; he said. &#8220;See you at the debate on Sunday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The second TV debate between Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton will take place on Sunday evening in St Louis.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump recently said he would not bring up stories about Bill Clinton&#8217;s infidelities in the debate, after previously threatening to do so.<\/p>\n<p>The latest opinion polls suggest Mrs Clinton is pulling ahead in key battleground states and Mr Trump will need a good performance at the debate to slow the trend.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8216;I moved on her&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the video, posted by the Washington Post, Mr Trump is heard bragging to TV host Billy Bush about trying to have sex with a married woman as well as kissing and groping others.<\/p>\n<p>The clip was part of unaired footage of an Access Hollywood segment ahead of Mr Trump&#8217;s appearance on the soap opera Days of Our Lives.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I moved on her and I failed. I&#8217;ll admit it,&#8221; Mr Trump is heard saying. &#8220;She was married. And I moved on her very heavily.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 624px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/F674\/production\/_91629036_035594486-1.jpg\" alt=\"Paul Ryan\" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Paul Ryan withdrew an invitation for Mr Trump to attend a Republican event<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn&#8217;t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she&#8217;s now got the big phony tits and everything. She&#8217;s totally changed her look.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Later in the conversation, he told Mr Bush he was &#8220;automatically attracted to beautiful&#8221; women and often tried to kiss them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just start kissing them,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t even wait. And when you&#8217;re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Top Republicans have been incensed by the comments.<\/p>\n<p>House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was &#8220;sickened by what I heard today&#8221; and rescinded his invitation to Mr Trump to attend the Republican Fall Fest in his home state of Wisconsin this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the comments were &#8220;repugnant,&#8221; adding that Mr Trump &#8220;needs to apologise directly to women and girls everywhere&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Another senior Republican, John McCain, said there were &#8220;no excuses for Donald Trump&#8217;s offensive and demeaning comments&#8221;.<\/p>\n<div id=\"responsive-iframe-54445252\" class=\"bbc-news-vj-iframe-wrapper\"><\/div>\n<p>For his part, Billy Bush said he was &#8220;embarrassed&#8221; by and &#8220;ashamed&#8221; of the contents of the video.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s no excuse, but this happened 11 years ago. I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along. I&#8217;m very sorry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump has said the latest remarks are &#8220;nothing more than a distraction&#8221; and &#8220;locker-room banter&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He once famously said at a campaign rally in January: &#8220;I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn&#8217;t lose voters.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He will be hoping his latest comments follow that trend.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US presidential candidate Donald Trump has apologised for obscene comments about women he made in a newly released videotape from 2005. Mr Trump said that &#8220;these words don&#8217;t reflect who I am&#8230; I apologise&#8221;. In the video, Mr Trump says &#8220;you can do anything&#8221; to women &#8220;when you&#8217;re a star&#8221; and brags about trying to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":237705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[3,109,1693],"class_list":["post-256034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-ghana-news","tag-trump","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/237705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}