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Melania Trump was the one who allegedly recommended before the 2016 election that the infamous Access Hollywood tapes, in which her husband, Donald Trump, boasted about sexual assault, be dismissed as nothing more than ‘locker-room talk,’ according to his former fixer Michael Cohen’s bombshell testimony, per The Hill.
Cohen, formerly Trump’s lawyer, fixer, and right-hand man, is currently serving as the prosecution’s lead witness in the Manhattan hush money/election interference criminal trial against Trump. Trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal a payment he made to Stormy Daniels (in order to bury the story about her alleged affair with the former President), per The Cut.
The $130,000 hush money payment was made during the last few days of the 2016 election when a struggling Trump was dealing with mounting criticism over the Access Hollywood tapes and the ensuing barrage of sexual assault allegations against him.
“The spin he [Donald] wanted to be put on it was that this is locker-room talk,” Cohen testified, “something that Melania had recommended, or at least he told me that’s what Melania had thought it was and used that in order to get control over the story and to minimize its impact on him and his campaign.”
The infamous Access Hollywood tapes were a huge blot on the former President’s first campaign. On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post published a video and article about Trump and TV host Billy Bush having a lewd conversation about women. In the tapes, Trump described what he would do to women, saying, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the p**sy. You can do anything.”
Trump issued a statement after the recording was made available to the public in October 2016, dismissing the distressing conversation that signified sexual assault, claiming, “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago,” adding a dig at his then-opponent Hillary Clinton’s husband, “Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”
Melania participated in the spin and supported her husband at the time in a CNN interview, saying that Billy Bush, the Access Hollywood host at the time, may have ‘egged him on’ to utter ‘dirty and bad stuff’ and engage in ‘boy talk.’ She said that she had never heard her spouse speak in such a way.
“That’s why I was surprised because I said like I don’t know that person that would talk that way, and that he would say that kind of stuff in private,” Melania said. “I heard many different stuff – boys talk,” she said. “The boys, the way they talk when they grow up and they want to sometimes show each other, ‘Oh, this and that’ and talking about the girls. But yes, I was surprised, of course.”
