Vice President Joe Biden told NBC “Late Night” host Seth Myers that he found it “astounding” that Donald Trump would “acknowledge that he engaged in the textbook definition of sexual assault.”
Biden was referring to a 2005 recording of a conversation with Billy Bush where he made sexually aggressive comments about Nancy O’Dell and Arianne Zucker. (RELATED: Billy Bush Suspended From ‘Today’ Show)
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“He didn’t say, you know I go up and I ask if — he said, I go up and I grab and I can do this,” Biden said. “And then I see in the paper today one of the pageants, Miss Teen America, and the teen girls I guess there were there three, four, five in a room. They were getting dressed, they were naked. He walked in and said, ‘don’t worry, girls. I’ve seen all this.’ And he stood there.” (RELATED: GoFundMe Set Up To Get More Trump Hot Mics Released)
(Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
“This is absolutely outrageous behavior,” he added. “I have spent most of my career trying to figure out how to begin to change the culture in this country so that we treat woman with respect and dignity. But my dad used to say the greatest sin of all is the abuse of power. ”
“And the cardinal sin of all is a man raising his hand and taking advantage of women,” he continued. “Here’s a guy who says I’m a star … I’m a billionaire, I’m a star, I’m a celebrity so I can go in and intimidate woman into allowing me to assault them and assuming they aren’t going to say anything.”
“That is the ultimate abuse of power,” he said. “And I don’t understand how anyone can justify the abuse of power.”