Washington: Initially a slow burn, the Republican mutiny over what amounted to Donald Trump's admission of sexual assaults became turbo-charged only when key Republican women vented their anger, through a day in which Trump's position was made more precarious as the GOP seemingly stumbled towards the unprecedented abandonment of its own nominee.
By late Saturday, at least 35 Republican members of congress and governors who had previously blessed Trump's controversial nomination withdrew their endorsement – with the call by many for him to be dropped from the ticket signalling their sense that Trump has become an existential threat to what is dubbed the party of Lincoln.
More News Videos
- Video duration
- 00:54
More Trump crude talk tapes surface
- Video duration
- 01:06
Shorten slams Trump
- Video duration
- 01:38
Clinton: Locker-room banter a 'really weak excuse'
- Video duration
- 00:57
Donald Trump: 'This is like Brexit, folks'
- Video duration
- 00:57
Saudi teen arrested for online flirting
- Video duration
- 02:05
Russia ready to join OPEC oil cap
- Video duration
- 02:05
Bali drug suspects paraded in balaclavas
- Video duration
- 01:03
Remains of 23 people unearthed in Peru
More Trump crude talk tapes surface
The Republican presidential nominee tells a US radio shock jock it's okay to call Ivanka 'a piece of ass'. Warning: explicit language
Rising fears of a wipeout in congressional elections, on top of the now given loss of the presidency, fuelled unprecedented desertions which by late Saturday had become a wall of revulsion. Adding fuel to their fire was a belief that Trump would not survive the last four weeks of the campaign without further damaging revelations – a view confirmed by Bill Pruitt, a former producer on Trump's reality show The Apprentice, who tweeted on Saturday: "I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse."
As a producer on seasons 1 & 2 of #theapprentice I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse. #justthebegininng
— Bill Pruitt (@billpruitt) October 8, 2016
Trump hunkered at his Trump Tower HQ in Manhattan, from where members of his team told reporters he was shaken and isolated, veering between disbelief and horror as he watched wall-to-wall news coverage of the implosion of his campaign – all on the eve of his vital, one-on-one debate encounter with Hillary Clinton on Sunday night US time.
With just a month to Election Day, determined Republican voices called for the candidate to be dumped immediately, but the condemnation of Trump by the party's leadership, though vocal, did not include calls for him to quit.
There is much talk of switching vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence to the top of the ticket – possibly with failed presidential nominee Ben Carson as a running mate whose outlier standing would appeal to Trump's followers. Needless to say, that's an outcome that Texas senator Ted Cruz, who came second in the party primaries, would find most objectionable.
But Trump insists he's not quitting and the party's rules make it difficult for it to abandon a confirmed nominee. And even an attempt to abandon this particular nominee would most likely exacerbate a destructive civil war already simmering within the party.
The calamity for the party now is that it has few options – and very little room in which to move between now and November 8.
In a mark of the tenor of an extraordinary debate unfolding across the Republican Party, former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber told The Washington Post: "The presidency has been lost, but the Congress and the party can be saved.
"We need to immediately focus all resources on the Congress, try to replace Trump and, failing that, settle on one alternative for principled Republicans to vote for, be it an existing third party or an agreed-upon write-in candidate."
High on a who's who of Republicans to turn against Trump was senator John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential candidate and a victim of Trump's cruel insults who nonetheless had endorsed his candidacy.
"I thought it important I respect the fact that Donald Trump won a majority of the delegates by the rules our party set," McCain said in a statement. "But [his] behaviour this week, concluding with the disclosure of his demeaning comments about women and his boasts about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even conditional support for his candidacy."
But it was the explosive energy of complaints by women in the party that opened the floodgates after the publication by The Washington Post of a 2005 video in which Trump luridly and lewdly shared his tactics on how to hit on unsuspecting women.
First to break ranks with calls for Trump to quit were party conservatives Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Martha Roby of Alabama. New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, on a knife-edge in her re-election race, quickly joined in, announced that in voting she would write in Pence's name for president.
"I'm a mom and an American first, and I cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women," she tweeted.
I will not vote for Donald Trump. Read my statement here: pic.twitter.com/F8zajgDZpg
— Kelly Ayotte (@KellyAyotte) October 8, 2016
Suddenly there was an eruption of protests around the country, amplified by a strategic decision by the Clinton campaign to go to ground, leaving the Republicans to tear themselves apart in the intense glare of the media spotlight.
In a stunning, unprecedented experience for the GOP, Pence waded into the middle, rebuking the man who he might serve as vice-president.
Seeming to suggest that Sunday's debate might be Trump's last chance to redeem himself, Pence said in a statement that he was offended by the words and actions described by Trump in the video: "I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them."
Pence went on: "We pray for his family and look forward to the opportunity he has to show what is in his heart when he goes before the nation tomorrow night."
Pence effectively told Trump he was on his own in trying to clean up this mess, reportedly explaining that Trump would have to look out for himself in the coming 48 hours because Pence did not believe he could be an effective surrogate.
Pence refused to stand in for Trump at a function in Wisconsin, from which he had been 'disinvited' by Speaker Paul Ryan. Both Pence and his wife reportedly were "absolutely apoplectic … melting down … inconsolable".
And when the Trump camp might have wondered if the extent of the revolt had been revealed, it expanded yet again with the airing of a new audio catalogue of Trump celebrating his sexual adventures and the entry of another revered Republican woman - former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice - calling for Trump's head.
"Enough! Donald Trump should not be President. He should withdraw," she posted on Facebook late on Saturday night. "As a Republican, I hope to support someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on Earth."
After closeting himself with family and close advisers through Friday evening, Trump released a video statement that might have sounded like an apology but which, in some quarters of the party, was heard as an act of defiance.
After describing the 2005 video as a mere "distraction", he claimed: "Anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologise. I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never, ever let you down" – and then he went against the advice of many in the party with a promise to seek redemption by making Bill Clinton's extra-marital affairs and Hillary Clinton's response to them an election issue.
Trump's propensity to see events through a different lens was apparent in a couple of quick phone interviews he gave to reporters.
"I'm holding up well, holding up well," he said when The Washington Post asked for his response to the anger and disbelief surging through the Republican Party. Rejecting demands that he step down, the candidate declared: "I'd never withdraw. I've never withdrawn in my life … No, I'm not quitting this race. I have tremendous support."
Totally at odds with the tenor of the wall-to-wall news coverage to which aides said he was glued, Trump brazenly told The New York Times: "I haven't heard from anyone saying I should drop out."
And looking ahead to November 8, he insisted: "Oh yeah we can win, we will win. We have tremendous support. I think a lot of people underestimate how loyal my supporters are."
Even Trump's wife disowned his remarks – though her rare entry to the campaign was read as a bid to slow an outbound tide of female support. In a statement issued by the campaign, Melania Trump said: "The words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to me. This does not represent the man that I know. I hope people will accept his apology, as I have, and focus on the important issues facing our nation and the world."
But as a wave of angry state governors and fearful down-ticket Republican candidates for the November 8 election tried to push Trump out, party heavies like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate leader Mitch McConnell, starkly proved Trump's "I'm not quitting" point, stopping short of demands that he resign.
The chairman of the Republican Conference, senator John Thune of South Dakota, was the most senior Republican to call for Trump to quit and to let Pence make the running.
Incredibly given what's gone beforehand in this campaign, both Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were reportedly sceptical upon hearing of the existence of the 2005 recording of events outside the set of the Days of Our Lives soap opera. Oddly enough, they had claimed that the comments didn't sound like the Trump they knew.
And on hearing the tape and Trump acknowledging that yes, it was his voice, he still had not anticipated such a dramatic reckoning in the party.
The Twitter-fixated candidate kept his head down for much of Saturday. In the morning, he indicated he might make a speech in the evening – it didn't happen. In 24 hours he posted just two tweets – one on Saturday morning that was silly: "Certainly has been an interesting 24 hours!"
And on Saturday afternoon, another that shrieked defiance: "The media and establishment want me out of the race so badly - I WILL NEVER DROP OUT OF THE RACE, WILL NEVER LET MY SUPPORTERS DOWN!"
The media and establishment want me out of the race so badly - I WILL NEVER DROP OUT OF THE RACE, WILL NEVER LET MY SUPPORTERS DOWN! #MAGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2016
In a bid to get his face before the cameras, Trump emerged briefly late on Saturday afternoon, to talk to supporters camped on the New York pavement and at the same time ignoring reporters' questions – save to respond "hundred per cent" to a yelled reporter's question asking if he would stay in the race.
In the evening, his adviser and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani bobbed up briefly, telling CNN as he departed Trump Tower by car: "There is nothing that will cause his dropping out – that's wishful thinking of the Clinton campaign and those who have opposed him for a long time."
Republican megadonors Robert and Rebekah Mercer issued a statement in which they stood by Trump. But Ed Rollins, a senior strategist for the pro-Trump Great America PAC, alluding to the risk of a donor freeze, told the Post: "We are in a very precarious place when it comes to raising money."
Among the few voices supporting Trump through Saturday, the father-and-daughter Mercer team added weight to a claim among Trump supporters that the crisis had been concocted by the media and the Clinton campaign – in their statement, they registered disgust with political elites "who quake before the boom box of media blather".
But a measure of the down-ticket anxiety was the reaction of Fred Malek, a key Republican donor and finance chairman of the Republican Governors' Association. Describing Trump's comments as "beyond disgusting", he said candidates and legislators should be free to repudiate Trump if they believed it was necessary.
"It will be difficult in the extreme for him to recover from this, but the biggest impact is likely to be its effect on all the down-ballot races," Malek told reporters. "If they pull the plug on support for Trump, the vast majority of voters will certainly understand that and most will respect it."
Long-time Trump supporter and adviser and a former Reagan education secretary, William Bennett, sounded bereft and defeated in comments to the Post – and to him it seemed that the jig was up.
"It's a shame, a crying shame, but he can't win," he said. "He should step down. [The Republican Party] has to make a cold-hearted calculation because of what he's done. It just can't stand.
"It's over. I hate to say it, but it's over."