Trump surrogate blames ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ for candidate’s lewd comments

“Eighty-million copies of Fifty Shades of Grey were sold,” Hughes said in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper and Republican political commentator Ana Navarro. “Unfortunately, pop culture itself has become very stretched in this area. This is just a part of it — if you read anything from Sports Illustrated to Playboy, sex unfortunately sells.”

Cooper pointed out to Hughes that the relationship in Fifty Shades of Grey was consensual, while Navarro argued that “to compare running for president to an erotic film or an erotic novel is crazy.”

“If he wants to hold to that standard then great, go write ‘The Art of the Groping,’ ” Navarro said. “But if you are running for president of the United States, you are a role model.”

Hughes was not the first person to blame the novel, which was published six years after Trump’s comments were caught on a hot mic in a conversation with former “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush. The argument cropped up on Twitter soon after the footage was released Friday.

Saturday, conservative host Joe Walsh tweeted, “If women are so outraged by Trump’s dirty talk, then who the hell bought the 80 million copies of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey?’ ” and a meme was born.

In addition to Cooper, several people pointed out that the sexual scenes in Fifty Shades of Grey were consensual.

Author E.L. James finally took to Twitter Sunday to remind people that her book was a work of fiction and that “the word pussy does not appear” in her novel.

This was not the first time a Trump surrogate blamed pop culture for Trump’s lewd language. On Monday night, former lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey told CNN that Hillary Clinton is a hypocrite for being a fan of Beyonce, who she said uses “lewd and bawdy language” in the song “Formation.”