The funniest thing about the lewd Donald Trump tape is how unshocking it is. It’s less of an ‘October surprise’ more of an ‘October of course’. Everybody who knows anything about Trump knows that he is, to use a Donald favoured word, braggadocious about his sexual exploits. The newly unearthed video of him boasting of his sexual misadventures is embarrassing for him, of course, but it’s not much worse than what he said in his interviews with Howard Stern, which has been extensively reported. It will hurt his chances with women voters, and of course grumpy Republicans are using the story as an excuse to try another coup against him, but I can’t really imagine many American voters will be sitting at home today thinking: ‘What? Donald Trump is vulgar and sexist? I’m appalled!’ (Indeed, for some of Trump’s anti-PC fans, his crudeness is his appeal: he’s a badass, and that’s what they like.)
Nevertheless, we live in strangely licentious yet puritanical times, and so everybody is pretending that they are horrified by the video while taking an almost pornographic delight in it.
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