Donald Trump’s Apology That Wasn’t

Oke News-For hours on Friday night, the political world waited for the rarest of expressions from Donald J. Trump — a heartfelt apology.

What viewers got was anything but.

During a 90-second videotaped appearance, Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, offered a strikingly brief articulation of regret for a decade-old audiotape in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals and said he could have his way with women because of his fame.


But his real message, which appeared early Saturday, was one of defiance. He described the controversy that upended the Republican Party for most of Friday as a mere “distraction,” and said that his vulgar remarks captured on the tape were nothing compared with the way Bill and Hillary Clinton had mistreated women.

Donald Trump’s Apology That Wasn’t

If anything, Mr. Trump’s videotaped statement was a truncated version of a speech that he had given countless times. And it did not reflect the several hours of conference calls and strategy meetings among his top aides, who were at first stunned and then nearly paralyzed by the revelation of the tape, which they worried would be fatal to his White House hopes.

“That took 10 hours?” an incredulous Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist, asked on CNN immediately after the statement.

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