Four years ago, Trump survived ‘Access Hollywood’ —
and a media myth of indestructibility was born
By
Media columnist
September 26, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. CDT
In the
warped sense of time born of the Trump presidency and the pandemic pause, it
seems both eons ago and only yesterday that the “Access Hollywood” story rocked the media
sphere.
In
fact, it was just about four years ago, on Oct. 7, 2016,
that The Washington Post first published the 2005 recording of Donald Trump
casually bragging about how easy it was for him to sexually assault women.
“I
don’t even wait,” the reality-TV star told NBC host Billy Bush,
suggesting he might start kissing the actress he was about to meet for the
first time. It would be no big deal, since “when you’re a star, they let you do
it. You can do anything. . . . Grab them by the p---y.
You can do anything.”
In that
more innocent time, some people thought these revelations would capsize Trump’s
presidential ambitions. A number of top Republicans distanced themselves;
members of the religious right claimed to be appalled; and his campaign seemed
to teeter. But Trump and his allies dismissed it as “locker room talk” and
quickly seized the opportunity to remind voters of the women problems of his
opponent’s husband. And he rolled on to victory.
From 2016: A political bombshell was right under NBC’s
nose. What took the network so long?
Since
then, there’s been one blockbuster scandal after another. The reports that his
campaign had welcomed Russian interference in the election, the playing-up to
authoritarian world leaders, the Ukraine “quid pro quo” that resulted in
impeachment, the racist attack on four non-White congresswomen known as “The
Squad,” and the deadly and deceptive mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.
And
yet, none seemed to threaten Trump’s substantial base — the roughly 40 percent
of the country who continue to support him. Trump knows full well some of them
will never abandon him; cue the “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue
and shoot somebody” tape.
Mainstream
journalists — striving for fairness, constantly in a defensive crouch about
being portrayed as “radical left” — have tried to analyze this loyalty. It’s
economic anxiety in the heartland, some say. Or it’s under-the-radar White
supremacy. It’s indoctrination by Fox News. It’s deep-seated hatred of the
elite. It’s resentment; it’s fear; it’s misinformation; it’s Mitch McConnell.
We the
media have never stopped trying to get it.
And so
we head out to another Midwestern diner to interview Trump voters about whether
they still support him. Or hang around a rally to politely ask members of the
gathered throngs why they think it’s fine to congregate maskless in enclosed
spaces in the middle of a pandemic.
This
kind of pointless inquiry should have stopped a long time ago.
For
several months this summer, I lived in Trump Country — specifically, in the
reddest congressional district in New York state, represented by Chris Collins,
the first member of Congress to endorse Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, until
he resigned in disgrace last
year while pleading guilty to insider trading.
I would
drive the short distance to the grocery store a couple of times a week, always
passing a Confederate flag flying proudly on my left, while to the right, two
huge Trump flags waved from porches. Nailed to a tall tree along the way, a
hand-lettered sign urged: “Keep America ‘Great’ 2020.” (I never failed to
ponder those quotation marks.)
A
neighbor told me he couldn’t countenance Trump but disliked Hillary Clinton so
much he voted for Jill Stein. A woman in the supermarket ranted to me that the
mandatory-mask order made her feel like she was living in China. A Republican
friend insisted that if Joe Biden chose Elizabeth Warren as his running mate,
he would feel compelled to vote for Trump even though he doesn’t like his
behavior.
I come
away from all of this — the past four years of shocking scandals and constant
lies, the conversations with voters, the media’s
beating-our-heads-against-the-wall coverage of Trump voters who still like
Trump — with a changed viewpoint about the needle that supposedly doesn’t move.
Actually,
it does move.
In
looking back at the “Access Hollywood” episode, I came across an academic study published
this year by scholars from the University of Massachusetts and Brandeis
University that cuts against conventional wisdom. Entitling their paper “Just
Locker Room Talk?,” the political scientists concluded that the revelations did
make a difference, finding “consistent evidence that the release of the tape
modestly, though significantly, reduced support for Donald Trump during the
2016 campaign.” These effects were similar among men and women, but noticeably
larger among Republicans compared with Democrats.
Trump’s
misdeeds do matter, and they do have a cumulative effect, which is why
Republican pollster Frank Luntz has said the election is Biden’s to lose, and
why Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight gives Trump only a 1 in 4 chance of
winning reelection.
(Which,
of course, is roughly where things stood four years ago, sounding a cautionary
note about polls and probability.)
Yes,
Trump has his core loyalists who don’t budge, no matter how many outrages the
news media reveals, nor what their hero does.
But not
everyone holds firm. Not endlessly.
To use
the medical metaphor, when it comes to changing their minds about Trump, a lot
of Americans may be resistant. But they aren’t immune. The long-term effects of
“Access Hollywood” — and everything that followed — are still playing out.
