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REPUBLICAN hopeful Donald Trump said there was “zero chance” of him quitting ahead of last night’s US presidential debate as his own party slammed his horrendous comments about women.
The scandal over Mr Trump’s comments overshadowed an exodus of skeletons from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s closet after whistleblowing website Wikileaks published transcripts of her confidential speeches to big business bosses.
The latest furore broke on Friday when producers of the 2005 reality TV programme Access Hollywood released a video shot aboard a coach on the way to filming an episode.
In it Mr Trump boasted of trying to seduce a married woman, shortly after his marriage to his current wife Melania Trump.
“I am automatically attracted to beautiful women,” the property billionaire said. “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet.”
Mr Trump also appeared to advocate sexual assault, saying he would “grab [women] by the pussy” without consent.
After initially dismissing his remarks as “locker-room banter,” Mr Trump made a televised apology on Saturday. But dozens of leading Republicans publicly declared opposition to his presidential bid over the comments.
They included neoconservative war-hawks Senator John McCain and former secretary of state under George W Bush Condoleezza Rice.
But the opprobrium the Republican Party political outsider Mr Trump has used as an electoral vehicle could even give the self-styled anti-Establishment candidate a boost in the polls.
The same day as the Access Hollywood revelations, Wikileaks published transcripts of speeches that Ms Clinton’s left-wing former rival for the nomination Bernie Sanders had urged her to release. In speeches thought to have earned her some $26 million (£21m) she praised free-trade deals she now claims to oppose and said Wall Street should have been consulted over regulation following the credit crunch.
She also said her bellicose policy of a Syria no-fly zone would mean massive bombing and missile attacks and admitted: “You’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.”
The leaks came from the email account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who attributed the hack to “Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump.”
