At 3:03 p.m. ET on Saturday, October 8, 2016, Tic Tac denounced Republican nominee for president Donald Trump.
A day earlier, on October 7, the Washington Post had published a story about a 2005 video of Trump on a hot mic with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.
“I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her,” Trump told Bush as they ogled a woman from the set of Days of Our Lives, where Trump was making a cameo. You know the video. We all do. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
So yeah, it made sense that a mint brand decided to create some public distance from the soon-to-be-president. And it had company. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he and his wife, Cindy, wouldn’t vote for Trump. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Trump to withdraw. NPR had a running list of Republicans calling on Trump to step aside, and by Saturday night, it had 30 names on it. For that weekend, Trump’s political career seemed to be on life support, and Republicans everywhere were confronting a belief that Trump couldn’t win, and were trying to figure out how to limit the down-ballot damage.
And while that weekend usually gets remembered as the moment we found out that Trump’s claim from earlier in the year that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” was more or less true, I’m not positive that’s exactly what happened. The public initially reacted to the tape with genuine disgust. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken that weekend had Hillary Clinton up by 11 points. And once the tape came out, a number of women came forward to accuse Trump of doing the things he’d been caught on tape bragging about.
This could have been the end of the Trump era. And for one weekend, it looked not just possible, but likely. Ultimately, Trump was bailed out by the Republican Party, which had learned to fear Trump’s biggest supporters, who were uninterested in any talk of Trump dropping out. By Monday, the Republican National Committee was back to being in “full coordination” with the Trump campaign. And by Wednesday, several Republicans who’d withdrawn their support were back on board.
But for one weekend, Republicans told him to quit
The Post’s story went up around 4 p.m. ET on Friday. Trump’s initial response was to dismiss it as “locker room banter,” and then to argue that “Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close,” before apologizing “if anyone was offended.” (A real classic of the genre.)
But it seemed to be too late for Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) condemned Trump on Twitter, writing, “Donald’s comments were vulgar, egregious & impossible to justify. No one should ever talk about any woman in those terms, even in private.” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) went on Fox 13 in Salt Lake City, saying, “I’m out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president.”
“My wife and I, we have a 15-year-old daughter, and if I can’t look her in the eye and tell her these things, I can’t endorse this person,” said Chaffetz, adding, “And why should we tolerate this? This is the Presidency of the United States of America: I just can’t do it.”
Trump tried to stop the bleeding by posting a video just after midnight on Saturday.
“I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong and I apologize. I’ve traveled the country talking about change for America but my travels have also changed me. I’ve spent time with grieving mothers who have lost their children, laid-off workers whose jobs have gone to other countries and people from all walks of life who just want a better future. I have gotten to know the great people of our country and I have been humbled by the faith they have placed in me. I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never, ever let you down. Let’s be honest. We’re living in the real world. This is nothing more than a distraction from the important issues we’re facing today. We’re losing our jobs. We’re less safe than we were eight years ago and Washington is totally broken. Hillary Clinton and her kind have run our country into the ground. I’ve said some foolish things but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.”
(That debate, you may remember, was the one where Trump lurked around the stage, called Clinton a “nasty woman,” and threatened to imprison her.)
Nothing was working, and big names in the Republican Party were beginning to rally behind Pence. Trump lost Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)’s endorsement on Saturday, with Crapo urging Trump to “step aside and allow the Republican Party to put forward a conservative candidate like Mike Pence who can defeat Hillary Clinton.” Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the future Senate majority leader, pushed for speed: “Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately.” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) tweeted, “It would be wise for [Trump] to step aside and allow Mike Pence to serve as our party’s nominee.”
And it looked like the party itself was withdrawing its support, too. That Saturday, Politico reported that the RNC emailed a vendor for its “Victory” program, dedicated to electing Trump, with the subject line “Hold on all projects.” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said he was “sickened” by Trump’s comments, and disinvited the future president from an event in Wisconsin that they were supposed to do together.
“With less than a month to go, a major party is walking away from its nominee,” read the headline of an October 8 story in the Washington Post. Brutal! So what happened?
While things didn’t necessarily look great for Trump polling-wise, his “MAGA” supporters were still firmly in his corner, and that made efforts to oust him difficult. On one hand, if you stand by Trump, you run the risk of being seen as a Trump apologist for those comments, potentially losing some voters. On the other hand, if you don’t stand by Trump, you risk alienating his supporters, who you need to win down-ballot races. Ryan got brutally heckled at the Wisconsin event he had disinvited Trump from. “Shame on you!” and “We want Trump!” calls broke out.
A Morning Consult/Politico poll taken right after the story broke found that only 12% of Republicans surveyed thought Trump should end his campaign.1 Seventy-four percent of Republicans wanted the party to continue supporting him. And it looked like the party wasn’t going to have much of a choice, as Trump was adamant that there was “zero chance I’ll quit.“
Most of Trump’s supporters had already baked the creep factor into their support for him. And on the night the tape came out, Ralph Reed of the Faith & Freedom Coalition explained why Trump’s comments wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for evangelicals:
“But people of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, grow the economy, appoint conservative judges and oppose the Iran nuclear deal. ... I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of their concerns.”
The GOP denounced, then immediately fell back in line behind Trump
On Monday, Ryan told House Republicans that while he wouldn’t personally defend or campaign for Trump, they should “do what’s best for you in your district.” By that evening, RNC chair Reince Priebus told members, “I want to make it very clear that the RNC is in full coordination with the Trump campaign and we have a great relationship with them.”
Things went from “Hold on all projects” to “A great relationship” in 48 hours.
On Tuesday, Fischer walked back her criticism of Trump, telling a Nebraska radio station, “I never said I was not voting for our Republican ticket.” And while that’s technically true, it was just three days earlier that she’d called on him to step aside. Still, sticking with him was “not a tough choice,” she said.
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) had also called on Trump to drop out of the race over the weekend, but on Wednesday, his campaign said that he “has always said he will vote for the Republican Party nominee.” That week, Thune, Mr. “Effective Immediately,” told a local paper, “I’m certainly not going to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
As Alex Shephard wrote at the time for The New Republic, “Republicans are crawling back to Trump.”
The story didn’t go away, but GOP resistance to Trump did. Had they held firm in defiance of what the MAGA movement was pushing, Republicans would have almost certainly lost the election (the ballots had already been printed and Trump wasn’t going to drop out), but would have been able to tank Trump and regroup for the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election with a party built around something other than Trump and his cult of personality. Instead, I think this became the moment when the Republican Party fully surrendered to the Trump wing. Over the following weeks, with a handful of notable exceptions, the party would largely be in Trump’s corner, promoting him as the best available option.
Evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem, who’d withdrawn his Trump endorsement after the tape, was back on Team Trump by October 20, saying, “It isn’t even close. I overwhelmingly support Trump’s policies and believe that Clinton’s policies will seriously damage the nation, perhaps forever.” On October 24, Crapo did a 180, explaining that “the choice we have is between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Given that choice, I will vote for the Republican ticket, Trump and Pence. We must elect a president who will appoint strong Supreme Court justices who will interpret the Constitution as it was written and who will help lead us to a stronger free market economy and a more limited constitutional government.”
On November 1, Ryan told Fox News that he voted early and for the Trump-Pence ticket.
And on the night of October 26, 19 days after declaring “I’m out,” Chaffetz tweeted this:
Two days later, at 12:57 p.m., Chaffetz tweeted again:
That’s how news of FBI Director James Comey’s infamous letter (that potentially won Trump the election) about newly discovered Hillary Clinton’s emails got made public... but that’s a story for another day.
There was never going to be a clean way to get rid of Trump
He was never going to be replaced on the ballot. At least not officially. The day after the Access Hollywood tape came out, CNN reported that replacing him was “practically impossible now because votes have already been cast.”
The party had a decision to make about what it wanted to be. It could sabotage Trump’s election in an act of self-preservation, throwing the election to Clinton, or it could get really comfortable with Trump being the face of the party. It chose the latter, and Trump eked out a win that came down to fewer than 78,000 votes in three states.
The Republicans who briefly condemned Trump have done remarkably well, working their way back into Trump’s good graces. Rubio, who said Trump’s comments were “impossible to justify,” is now the secretary of state. Crapo chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Thune is now the Senate majority leader.
A little more than four years later, Trump would once again find his political fate in the hands of the Republican Party after he tried and failed to carry out an autogolpe. Twice, the party had the opportunity to end Trump’s reign. Twice, it failed to do so, condemning and then welcoming him back with open arms.
To put this in perspective, after his disastrous 2024 debate performance, nearly two-thirds of Democrats wanted Biden to drop out of the race.