A senior staffer at the Republican National Committee told reporters after Sunday’s presidential debate that he isn’t sure whether grabbing someone’s genitals fits the definition of sexual assault.
RNC spokesman Sean Spicer, who has been working as a liaison between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the GOP, was asked in the post-debate spin room whether he considered grabbing someone’s genitals a form of forced sexual contact.
“I don’t know,” Spicer responded, according to The Weekly Standard. “I’m not a lawyer.”
In the wake of leaked audio tapes in which Trump said “you can do anything” to women when you’re a celebrity like “grab them by the pussy,” Spicer and several other Trump surrogates have been asked whether what the Republican presidential nominee described was sexual assault.
Trump himself was asked to address the severity of his comments during the second debate Sunday night.
“Just for the record, though, are you saying that what you said on that bus 11 years ago that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper had asked Trump.
“I’ve said things that, frankly, you hear these things I said. And I was embarrassed by it. But I have tremendous respect for women,” Trump responded, before being pressed by Cooper a second time.
“Have you ever done those things?” he asked
“Women have respect for me, and I will tell you: No, I have not,” Trump said.
