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“And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
In 2005, Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about groping women while talking to Billy Bush, who was then cohosting Access Hollywood. In October 2016, the tape of the conversation was released by the Washington Post, igniting a firestorm of condemnation and disgust. Bush, who was by then cohosting the Today show, was fired as a result. In November 2016, Donald Trump was elected president anyway.
In 2024, as Trump runs for president a third time, some voters — the youngest of whom were only 10 years old when the tape first broke — are stumbling across the Access Hollywood tape for the first time.
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Soleil Golden, a 22-year-old clinical research assistant and creator who goes by @toxicthotsyndrome on TikTok and has 591.5k followers, posted a video of her and fellow creator @awalmartparkinglot reacting to the tape. “I moved on her like a b*tch,” Trump can be heard saying as the two TikTokers shake their heads, cover their eyes, and hold their fingers to their temples as though they have a migraine. “You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait.”
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Golden, who was 14 when the tape was first released, says she decided to make the video because she feels like there are people who haven't heard the total audio “in the full extent of just how depraved it is.” (Though Trump initially apologized for the tape, he later questioned whether it was him on the tape at all, saying, “We don’t think that was my voice.”)
“It's super concerning that so many people like to paint Trump as a family man," Golden tells Teen Vogue. “And he and Vance have tried to create this image of the importance of the American family unit, and that's why they're trying to get rid of a lot of reproductive health care services and facilities, if God forbid, they win the election.”
It was an uncomfortable video to film, Golden adds, because the tape is so hard to listen to — but that just hardened her resolve. “The fact that fathers and women with daughters and people who they would want to protect around somebody like that are still voting for that man really made me think, Maybe they haven't heard this whole thing or maybe they've forgotten about it.”
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“I just realized first time voters 18-22yo are probably just hearing/understanding this, since it hasn’t really been played much since 2016, and they were children then,” one comment on Soleil’s video reads. “me being almost 20 and seeing this and you described my experience exactly. im horrified and literally want to cry,” someone else responds. Another comment in the same thread, accompanied by a blue heart emoji, reads, “yes! i was in 7th grade in 2016 and i don’t [remember] much from it, but now i’m 20, educated, and ready to vote for the first time.”
It’s strange to try to explain what October 2016 was like to young voters who were kids when the tape dropped. It was a pre-#MeToo world. It was also a moment of strange optimism, when it seemed inevitable that the first woman president of the United States was about to be elected. When the Access Hollywood tape became one of that year’s October surprises, it felt like the final nail in the coffin. There was no way that a man who had been caught on tape admitting to kissing women without consent (“I don’t even wait”) and using his fame (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”) to “grab 'em by the pussy” would be elected president. And then he was.
I want to be able to tell young voters who are just now for the first time hearing about or fully understanding this tape that the world has since changed. And in some ways, it has. In 2017, the #MeToo movement, originally created by Tarana Burke, was reignited, catalyzed by groundbreaking investigations by the New York Times and the New Yorker into years of alleged harassment and sexual abuse of women by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. At the time it really did feel like something was changing. I remember tweeting only the words “#metoo” in solidarity with the movement and to recognize the harassment I had faced myself.
It felt revolutionary — and, in a way, I still want to believe that it was. Because of the #MeToo movement people are able to speak more openly about sexual abuse and harassment. At the same time, though, the man who admitted to grabbing women by the pussy was not only elected president in 2016, but eight years later, he’s close to winning the White House again, with most polls showing a virtual toss-up between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
As I read through the comments of young voters who are shocked that the Access Hollywood tape wasn’t a dealbreaker, I want to tell them we were shocked too. And it’s not the tape alone. There are dozens of women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct dating back to the 1970s, such as Jessica Leeds, who said Trump tried to reach his hand up her skirt on a flight to New York; and Jill Harth, who accused Trump of “attempted rape” in a 1997 complaint; and the five former 1997 Miss Teen USA contestants who said Trump unexpectedly walked into their changing room during the pageant. In 2023, a federal jury even found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation for assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid-'90s. (Trump has denied all of the allegations.)
The tape and the accusations and the allegations weren’t enough in 2016 when Trump seized the presidency but maybe they’ll be enough this time, says Annie Wu Henry, a 28-year-old digital strategist. “Our youngest voters today were just children when he first ran for office. Knowing about something and then actually hearing it… it does make it a lot more real, of truly how little he values women. We thought it was going to be the end of him in 2016," she adds, "and it can be the end of him now.”
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