Adam Schultz for Hillary for America(NEW YORK) — The taped 2005 conversation in which Donald Trump boasted of groping women without their consent amounts to “the textbook definition of sexual assault” and a “cardinal sin,” Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday.
“First of all, what I found astounding is that he would so publicly … no matter who he was talking to, that he would acknowledge that he engaged in the textbook definition of sexual assault,” Biden said on NBC’s Late Show With Seth Myers.
“He didn’t say, you know, ‘I go up and ask.’ He said, ‘I go up and grab and I can do this.’”
The Washington Post first reported Friday on the “hot-mic” recording, where Trump is heard saying he can “do anything,” including “kiss” and “grab” women because he is famous.
Trump denied in Sunday night’s debate ever actually engaging in such behavior, calling it simply “locker-room” talk.
Biden went on to explain his own work in combating sexual assault over his career and why he is so passionate about Trump’s comments, which the Republican presidential candidate made without knowing he was being recorded.
“My dad used to say the greatest sin of all is abuse of power, and the cardinal sin of all is a man raising his hand or taking advantage of a woman,” Biden said. “And here’s a guy who says, ‘I’m a star… so I can go in, intimidate women into allowing me to assault them and assume they’re not going to say anything.’ That is the ultimate abuse of power and I don’t understand how anyone can remotely justify that.”
Biden’s comments echo his initial reaction to the report seen in a tweet he sent out last Saturday afternoon, when a flood of Republicans were either offering harsh condemnation of Trump or revoking their endorsements entirely.
The words are demeaning. Such behavior is an abuse of power. It’s not lewd. It’s sexual assault. –Joe
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 8, 2016
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