'Access Hollywood' slams Trump’s questioning of 2005 tape: 'The tape is very real'
The show is slamming the president's doubt of the infamous 2005 recording.
— -- "Access Hollywood" is slamming any insinuation that the infamous 2005 tape which captured a crude conversation between Donald Trump and the show's then-host Billy Bush is not authentic.
The president has privately questioned the authenticity of the recording, sources told ABC News earlier this week. Trump has repeated the claim to advisers in recent weeks and even a Republican senator earlier this year, sources said. The news of his comments was first reported by The New York Times.
"We wanted to clear something up that has been reported across the media landscape,” Access Hollywood's Natalie Morales said alongside co-host Kit Hoover, during Monday's broadcast. “Let us make this perfectly clear —- the tape is very real. Remember his excuse at the time was ‘locker-room talk.’ He said every one of those words.”
In the tape, Trump tells Bush that "when you're a star" women let men "do anything," including "grab them by the p----."
Shortly after the recording was released in October 2016, Trump said in a video statement, "Anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong and I apologize ... I never said that I'm a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I'm not."
Following his video statement, during a CNN presidential debate, Trump told moderator Anderson Cooper, "I don’t think you understood what was — this was locker room talk. I’m not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I’m not proud of it. But this is locker room talk."