For any other Presidential candidate, last Friday’s audio leak would have dismantled their campaign. For Donald Trump it’s just a typical Friday. 

For those that have been following Trump’s comments throughout the election and even decades before, Friday’s comments are no surprise – they simply reinforce everything that he’s said and done up until now. Sadly the continued trend in Trump’s behavior means little to many, leaving our country’s morals spinning down the toilet of disrepair.

Trump’s comments are disturbing and cringe-worthy on a multitude of levels. His excuse for his banter being “locker room talk” normalizes objectification of women and rape culture in our society by making it seem as though all men partake in this appalling behavior. Lets make this clear: Trump’s comments caught on tape were not just describing what he’d do if given the opportunity — they described in explicit, lewd detail acts he has committed and showed no remorse for, then or now. 

Simply saying sorry and then switching the topic to ISIS when he was pressed on the tapes during last Sunday’s debate shows that Trump isn’t sincerely sorry and thinks the leak is a non-issue. Normalizing these attitudes toward women is how the Brock Turners of the world come to be.

With Trump’s actions we as a country are navigating a slippery moral slope that has the potential to wipe out much of the social and civil rights progress we’ve made over the last half century. Not only are Trump’s recent comments on women scary, his divisive words regarding Mexicans, African-Americans, Muslims and many other prominent minority groups are equally as haunting.

Trump’s comments diminish the accomplishments of successful women and minorities everywhere, and the fact that he’s running against a successful woman makes this train wreck even more painful to watch. By no means is Hillary Clinton perfect, but she’s less catastrophic of a candidate than Trump.

The literal backbone of Trump’s campaign is inciting hate, whether it’s referring to all Mexicans as murderers and rapists or lumping all Muslims into radical Islamic terrorism. But perhaps a new low in his campaign is using former president Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual assault victims as political pawns in an attempt to distract from his own misdeeds.

Trump seems to forget which Clinton he’s running against in this campaign, but a strong hold on fact and knowledge, (among a bevy of other things) has escaped Trump this entire campaign cycle. Trump lives in his own reality where truth and fact take a back seat to what The Donald wants, which we now know is to grab women by the privates because he’s powerful and they’ll “let” him do it.

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