Media Reacts To Donald Trump Alt-Reality Update: ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape A Fake

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Will NBC News redeem itself, after getting scooped on its own big stories – twice – with a definitive report on the authenticity of NBCU’s Access Hollywood tape that President Donald Trump now suggests is fake?

Will Fox News be the first to book Billy Bush, to ask, for the record whether Trump did in fact tell him while riding the show’s bus that he was so famous he could grab women “by the p*ssy” with impunity?

Oh, the headlines to be had with news report President Donald Trump has been telling people that Access Hollywood tape, revealed during the presidential campaign, is fake.

Though word of Trump’s stout-denial campaign broke Saturday in the New York Times, Monday morning’s coverage on TV news outlets was disappointingly confined to WTF-ing by various talent. CNN’s Chris Cuomo, for instance, wondered what Trump is thinking, having cut a damage-control video during the campaign in which he admitted to, apologized for, and then dismissed as “locker room talk,” his remarks caught on a hot mic while on an Access Hollywood bus with that show’s host Bush.

“Anyone who knows me, knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it. I was wrong and I apologize,” then-candidate Trump damage-controlled in a video statement that aired internationally on October 7, 2016.

“I think it is way more troubling than it is getting credit for,” Cuomo said of NYT’s report on Trump’s so-far private denials of the tape’s authenticity.

“I don’t think this is an offhand comment. I think he believes this will work with people,” Cuomo marveled.

In its report, NYT stated the obvious: Trump is stuck between a rock and a hard place in trying to respond to the Roy Moore scandal, because of the obvious parallel to the multitude of women who claimed Trump groped them in the wake of his bus boast. Trump thinks he’s found his way out of the mess, NYT wrote: “He suggested to a senator earlier this year that it was not authentic, and repeated that claim to an adviser more recently.”

Despite Access Hollywood falling under the same corporate umbrella as NBC News, and Bush by then having become an NBC News employee, Washington Post broke the news of the tape, for which NBC News came under fire. The news operation’s reputation took another hit more recently when it passed on Ronan Farrow’s reporting about women alleging they had been sexually harassed and abused by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Farrow took his reporting to New Yorker magazine.

Others joined Cuomo, in sentiment, via Twitter:

With Trump claiming TIME was ‘probably’ going to name him person of the year, and that the Access Hollywood tape is fake, it’s time to speculate on what his next lie/hallucination might be. My guess: he believes he wrote “Like A Rolling Stone” & “Stairway to Heaven” in one night.

— Ken Olin (@kenolin1) November 26, 2017

Trump now says it wasn’t him on the Access Hollywood tape. This is gaslighting.

— Touré (@Toure) November 26, 2017

Is Trump getting worse? Is he now believing his fantasies and lies? Does he really think the Access Hollywood tape was faked? Is he being driven over the edge by the lack of love he so desperately craves from a world that sees him for what he is? https://t.co/HpGiRS2Fxq

— Anne Rice (@AnneRiceAuthor) November 26, 2017

Greg Evans contributed to this report.

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