A CNN anchor was left visibly shocked Tuesday after Ben Carson suggested that part of the problem with the scandal surrounding lewd comments Donald Trump made in 2005 is that journalists aren’t more familiar with that kind of language.
The GOP nominee and his surrogates have dismissed his recently unearthed comments as “locker room talk,” and CNN’s Brianna Keilar pressed Carson Tuesday to answer for the Republican candidate’s downplaying of the scandal.
“Why did you call it locker room talk?” the anchor asked.
“Call it whatever you need to call it to make it feel good to you,” Carson replied, “but the fact of the matter is, I mean, I’ve been in lots of places … What I am saying is that, that kind of banter goes around all the time. Is it the right kind of thing to do? Absolutely not.”
“So you’ve heard people talking like this?” Keilar asked.
“I’ve heard people talking like that — of course. Are you kidding me?” Carson said.
Keilar persisted, “Where are you hanging out and with whom are you hanging out that you hear people talking like that?”
“As I was growing up, people were always trying to talk about their sexual conquest, and trying to make themselves appear, you know, like … Casanova. I’m surprised you haven’t heard that. I really am.”
“I haven’t heard it and I know a lot of people who have not heard it,” she said.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Carson said.
“The problem is that I haven’t [heard it]?”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Carson repeated.
The conversation Tuesday comes days after the Washington Post published a report revealing Trump once bragged about leveraging his celebrity status in return for sexual favors from women, some of them married.
“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump bragged in 2005 to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush. “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
“Grab them by the pussy,” Trump said. “You can do anything.”
The GOP nominee also talked about his failed attempt to sleep with an unidentified married woman.
“I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married,” Trump said.
“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look,” he said.
The recording, which comes amid separate reports suggesting Trump has a long track record of mistreating women, does not make it clear when the GOP nominee’s reportedly failed attempt to seduce a married woman took place.
On Tuesday, Carson stressed that he thought Trump’s comments were “abominable.”
“I’m not sure that you can give a good enough apology for, you know, those abominable words,” Carson said. “There just is no excuse for it. You have to apologize for it, and move on.”
