Donald Trump has a message for America: Brace yourself, because more damning recordings might be coming.
At a rally in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Trump addressed the disastrous 2005 video the Washington Post released Friday in which he could be heard talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and grabbing other women "by the pussy." It was the Republican presidential candidate's first rally since the video went public and launched a wave of criticism and defections from one-time allies.
"I was getting beaten up for 72 hours on all the networks for inappropriate words from 12 years ago, locker room talk, whatever you want to call it," Trump said of the video. "But I said to myself, 'Wait a minute. And I just saw very inappropriate words, but Bill Clinton sexually assaulted innocent women and Hillary Clinton attacked those women viciously.'"
Trump then seemed to imply that there could indeed be more similarly damning videos released in the near future.
"If they want to release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we'll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things," Trump said.
In the aftermath of the Post video, there has been widespread speculation that there could be other recordings — potentially from Access Hollywood, where the video was made; from Trump's time on The Apprentice; or from some other source. And additional video could be even more disastrous for Trump: After the Post published its story, a wave of criticism grew into calls for Trump to resign the Republican nomination. Multiple high-profile Republicans also took back their endorsements of the candidate.
Trump's rally Monday in Pennsylvania was a preview of how he plans to respond if more recordings surface. After downplaying his comments in the video as "locker room talk," he went on at length about the women he said the Clintons have victimized.
"Bill Clinton was the worst abuser of women ever to sit in the Oval Office, he was a predator," Trump said, adding later that "for decades Hillary Clinton has been deeply familiar with her husband's predatory behavior."
Trump alleged that Hillary Clinton also "put even more women in harm's way."
The attack on the Clintons came after he criticized Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server, her "deplorables" comment, and her record as secretary of state. It appeared to be a mix of scripted comments and off-the-cuff remarks and showed that Trump is bracing himself for the final weeks of an increasing bruising campaign by pointing again and again to the Clintons.
"I would say that Hillary is highly overrated," Trump added.