Susie Webster-Toleno: Like others, I'm not actually surprised that Donald Trump thinks and talks about women that way, though it was painful to me to hear how casually he talked about committing acts of sexual assault.
I'm willing to bet that almost every single woman I know has been groped in exactly the way he mentioned, and hearing him brag about it filled me with rage.
My secondary reaction, though - on the heels of the rage at Trump and our undeniable culture of rape and misogyny - was something akin to shame on behalf of white Republicans, though I am not a Republican.
I keep thinking to myself, “This is freaking them out?”
I mean, really - the racism, islamophobia, anti-immigrant stuff wasn't enough to make them question his fitness for office?
His frequent lies, lack of integrity in his business dealings and inability to practice self-control didn't disqualify him?
The violence he calls his followers to practice, his blatant stirring up of racist attacks at his rallies - these things were fine? But come after “our” women, and suddenly people are freaking out?
So, I guess you could say that my initial rage at Trump deepened into sorrow and even despair at what the public response highlights about the brokenness of our culture.
With all of that said, though, I am a congenitally hopeful person. I believe that part of what we are seeing is the painful death throes of a terminally ill ideology.
As we're allowed to see more of the ugly underbelly of hatred, we have the opportunity to reject it and move toward healing and compassion.
All that is required of us is to refuse to stay silent in the face of death-dealing ideologies.
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Joe Hart: Two things:
1) I have no idea how and why people are shocked! It's the Donald Trump that I know.
2) It's a sad state of affairs, like for future generations (such as my kid) when it comes to our choice of the two major party candidates available.
I've researched more about the Green Party, Independence Party, and Libertarian Party!
Sad.
* * *
Michael Logerfo: Sadly, I get the feeling that these revelations will change nothing. People who support Trump will just double down and embrace him for being “honest.”
People who detest Trump just have one more example of why they he is deplorable. #IsitDecemberYet?
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Caroline Liebenow: I'm far more concerned about what Hillary Clinton has actually done than what Trump talks about. Overall, I'm disgusted with both of them.
Clinton didn't need my vote during the primaries; she doesn't need it now. I'm an independent, and I don't care if any party dissolves.
What makes me smile right now is posts about people writing in Bernie Sanders and voting for Jill Stein.
* * *
Isaac Mass: As the father of three daughters, I continue to be more and more embarrassed that this man represents my party. And yet, the alternative is so terrible that in a year I would have seriously considered voting Democrat for the first time, I can't imagine it.
Thank God for goofy Gary Johnson.
* * *
Dot Lenhart: Donald Trump's attitude and words about women turn my stomach. As the mother and grandmother of a woman and a girl, I hope that they will never be personally exposed to a person of his ilk.
I fear that Trump's supporters will once again use this incident as proof that “he speaks his mind,” as if that was a good thing.
The women of the world deserve respect, and none is coming forth from this man. I certainly hope that enough people are enraged about this crude man that he is rejected from the presidential race.
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Barbara Holliday: RNC = Republican Nazi Committee.
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Nancy Braus: Trump's public pride in his vile behavior with young women turns the stomachs of me and millions of others. His comments about women feel like the worst fraternity house language, but he is a grown man past middle age.
In addition to the daily trove of sexist, racist, ageist, anti-Muslim, fat-shaming remarks, he has clearly shown that he is a seriously unkind, self-centered person with no empathy or compassion.
And this is before the political analysis!
* * *
Chrissy Howe: Trump's comments come as no shock. They give me chills, but they come as no shock.
He revealed himself as a misogynist long ago. He continues to shock me with his popularity.
What isn't surprising is that an entitled adult male who started his life with millions of dollars believes himself to be entitled to the body of a woman who isn't consenting to his advances.That is the foundation of rape culture: the idea that a person is yours to take, the language of grabbing a woman's genitals, as if his power makes her want to be assaulted, victimized, kissed or fondled by him.
Equate Trump's words with the actions he is describing, and tell me it isn't damaging to the strength and equality that women have been working to acquire, while his daughter dares to take the podium and announce some care package for maternity leave and child care. As if we can actually draw the conclusion that her father respects women enough to work for them and legislate on their behalf.
Worse than what Trump says are the people who continue to support him by calling liberals weak, stating that Hillary Clinton supports rapists, that her husband is one, too, and that “locker room talk” somehow excuses what sounds like perpetrators violating the basic rights that a woman has to walk down a sidewalk without harassment.
Trump has crossed every line that I have ever held up to the esteem of the office. He has crossed every line that I hold for my own husband and children.
He is without a modicum of respect for anyone besides himself, and I don't think we can continue to draw dangerous comparisons to him and Clinton. They run for the same office, but the similarities end there.
I wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders. I wanted to write him in. But now - now that I feel endangered and now that I understand through applied knowledge what minorities have been seeing in this campaign - I know, deeply, that I must vote for Hillary Clinton and that I must convince others to do the same.
* * *
Nancy Clingan: What I'm hearing is how many of us women (your sisters, friends, mothers, daughters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers) are sharing our stories of how common sexual assault is. We all have numerous stories. We just don't talk about them.
If Donald Trump's horrid behavior has any benefit whatsoever - and that's questionable - it is that we might uncover how insidious sexual assault is, how insidious misogyny is.
Perhaps this response is parallel to the awareness of the numerous violent attacks on people of color by police after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It came out.
* * *
Fran Lynggaard Hansen: If we wait long enough, a person's true personality always shines through. Trump will self-destruct simply by continuing to be himself.
* * *
Jim Culleny: Bombs self-destruct, too. Depending on where they explode, their shrapnel can be brutal. If they land in the oval office we're gonna have some heavy national shrapnel - believe me.
When you turn a racist, misogynist narcissist who “says what he thinks” into a president, what he thinks will be emanating from the Oval Office in tweets and policy for at least four years (if we last that long without imploding or exploding).
If Trump hasn't curbed the enthusiasm of his primitive brain by now, don't expect that giving him the bully pulpit is gonna change anything. He'll just get louder, cruder, more vituperative, more thoughtless, and more vicious.
This is the first real sign that something - something! - has made a dent in the desperately complicit Republican party's cynical political decision to gloss over every degenerate utterance of Trump. I'm not just happy, I'm ecstatic!
* * *
Kevin O'Keefe: The campaign is in a free-fall as the last holdouts of the GOP now have to defend the (latest) indefensible. There has been much hand-wringing in the press this election cycle about what this upcoming vote means for the future of America. We might be at a crossroads of some kind, as most elections are, but the perspective and scale of this historical moment is hard to judge so close in time.
Many writers and propagandists have gone to great lengths to expose the character flaws and strengths of the candidates. The plethora of writing has made this the most fascinating U.S. election in my lifetime, perhaps ever.
Simple majorities of Americans express unfavorable ratings for both major-party candidates. Yet the scariest statistic I've seen to date is 37 percent.
That was the percentage of the vote that Hitler received from the voters in the 1932 German election. His main campaign slogan was “Freedom and Bread.”
If Mr. Trump surpasses this, as is likely if current polling holds, how will be able to reconcile that similarity with our the evolving American experiment?
Saturday night's exodus seems like the rats-leaving-a-sinking-ship metaphor.
* * *
Laurie Bayer: A vote for anyone other than Hillary Clinton is a vote for Donald Trump. I think Clinton took to heart what folks were saying with Bernie Sanders's popularity. I hope she wins.
* * *
Pleun Bouricius: Let me preface by saying that I think that Donald Trump is a nasty piece of work and I fear the possibility that someone so stupid could become president.
That said, I think our outrage is manufactured and serves to confirm the same values that many people use to repress women. Moreover, how is it that someone can advocate violence, repression, and whatnot, and that's all okay, but simply talking trash about women is a game changer?
Give me a break: Are we living in the 19th century and need to protect the reputations of the maidens?
The sexual mores that speak out of the level and language of outrage as compared to outrage about, for instance, beating people or racism is to me a sign that we're altogether happily tapping into this, which makes me exquisitely wary.
* * *
Steve James: As someone with daughters, I think the outrage comes from the fact that some consider Trump's words acceptable. I also think that his admissions of sexual coercion are serious, especially to the women who have made claims about them, which he had denied.
I can't feel outraged by American hypocrisy anymore, but it's comforting when others are. Of course, I know that many men have done or said the same things. I don't expect it to stop, but I hope that people continue to be outraged rather than the alternative.
* * *
David R. Locke: Trump's prose and demeanor are as much a reflection of his voters as they are of him. This election serves as a wake-up call to the highbrow of society to the presence of the unibrow. The democratic process is for all walks of life.
* * *
Marlene O'Connor: This exposes (again) the ugly underbelly of America to the point of the (finally) last straw for the Republican Party.
* * *
Rick John: The idiot Trump is playing everyone because he can, and the media loves it. He and his cronies are a threat to civility and peace, period.
* * *
Peter Simoneaux: There's absolutely nothing to be surprised about in this now-released 10-year-old videotape of Donald Trump. We've known all along that this is who Trump is.
What is surprising is how many of his supporters, of the non-racist, non-miscegenistic, average-American voter class, continue to blithely support his Titanic-ocean-cruise of a campaign.
I'm not speaking here of the “basket of deplorables,” be they 15 percent or 35 percent or 50 percent of Trump's core supporters. I'm referring to lifelong GOP voters (and a significant percentage of Democrats as well) motivated primarily by conservative religious values and by “old school” pro-business values, as opposed to visceral hatred or resentment of minorities and immigrants.
And also working-class voters who have lost jobs to outsourcing, who have concluded, with much justification, that establishment Democrats such as Hillary Clinton really don't care about them or their jobs.
I get all that.
What remains incomprehensible to me is how such folk continue to stand by a candidate as crass, gross, and untrustworthy as Donald Trump.
The only explanation for it in my mind is mass-media brainwashing, in the form of Fox News, and other far-right conservative media.
I really do believe that a significant portion of our voting public has been hypnotized by decades of “us against the world” brainwashing by the likes of Fox News and conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
And I think that's what holds people to Trump, notwithstanding his decades-long list of offenses to common sense and dignity, from which these folks would otherwise be duly repelled.
For many of these voters, their perception of the world continues to be dominated by the perception that it's “us against the world.” The entire conservative media continuously feeds this perception.
As absurd as it is on the face of it, this is Trump's principal message.
* * *
Robin Rieske: I wouldn't give this man any more precious ink! He has been saying outrageous things about women and other people for years; why is this revelation any different?
Use the space in The Commons to highlight the positive happening in our community or how we might help those affected by the hurricane in Haiti. Trump is an energy suck; use it elsewhere.
* * *
Joyce Marcel: You can't publish the words I would use.
* * *
Jerry Appell: I've had the experience in my life of observing individuals overcome their worst tendencies (friends, family, students, and myself) by being exposed to public voices that encourage us to tap into the best part of ourselves.
Those public voices include famous figures such as Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Bernie Sanders. But they also include teachers, ministers, journalists, and social workers who do their work outside the public eye.
Racism and xenophobia may never be completely eradicated from our society, but I have seen the needle move when people are exposed to hope instead of fear - especially those of us who are on the verge of scapegoating the powerless for our problems.
The tragedy of Donald Trump is that he has contributed to reversing that process by giving public voice and false legitimacy to the worst elements of the human heart.
All of us are affected. Even those of us who speak out against him are not immune to the ugliness of the rhetoric.
As the Trump candidacy ends (as I hope it will), there is much work to be done in order to repair the moral infrastructure of public discourse that his candidacy has contributed to eroding.
* * *
Brenda Siegel: Trump represents everything that is wrong with our country. It is not that he said these things, it is that men in power do say these things.
This man is not alone. It is not that he paid zero taxes. He did that legally; after all, he is an entitled businessman with loads of power. It is a sign of our broken system that people like him don't want to change.
It is not that he wished for the housing crisis, it is that people in power hoped for it because they would make money. They bet on it and then were not jailed for making sure it happened.
It is not that he employs principles of Mein Kampf, it is that bigotry of this style still exist in such large, glaring groups that his candidacy pulled neo-Nazis and white supremacists from out from behind the computer screen and made them feel justified to let it all hang out.
It is not each individual action that he takes, it is that he is a shell of a human dressed up in every single f'd-up thing that is happening in our country.
Trump completely represents the greedy, racist patriarchy in which we still live. If you watch the video that came to light and you are a Donald Trump supporter and you can still justify voting for him, if you think a man who not only said those things but also knew he was being recorded and still said them - well, then you, too, represent all the things that I just said.
The response talks about our daughters but never condemns Trump as an example for our sons. I don't only condemn him in honor of all the girls I have ever taught but also for my son, to show that one must stand against people who speak this way about women.
* * *
Lisa Kuneman: It's really disturbing to see the way many Trump supporters are chalking it up to “locker room talk,” etc. I don't know if they realize they are sending code words that translate to “rape culture is OK by me.”
Also, they say that Bill Clinton “got away with reprehensible stuff.” But he didn't - he was impeached. It was not OK by me that he abused the power of his office.
My point is: Enough. We have to stop saying that sexual assault is OK (despite being illegal) as long as someone somewhere is committing it, or condoning it, or there was one woman once who said she liked it, or whatever.