Like the rest of the political world, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah was fired up Monday night about the leaked video of Donald Trump explaining to Billy Bush about how he likes to “move on” women and “grab them by the pussy,” something he said he gets away with because he’s a “star.”
But Noah wasn’t laughing.
What really “pissed” the host off about this story was that after Trump got caught “boasting about sexual assault,” he and his surrogates managed to “spin it as something much different.” Namely: “Locker room talk.”
“They’re confusing sex talk and sexual assault talk,” Noah said. “There’s a big difference between saying dirty words and glorifying non-consensual sexual contact.” He added, “Not every guy has these conversations, that’s a crime.” And while everyone seems to be focusing on Trump’s use of the word “pussy,” the real issue is that he claims he “forced himself” on women.
“You tell me which is worse,” Noah said. In one scenario he imagined a well-spoken man saying that he “dined with a lady,” “escorted her back to her residence,” and “proceeded to caress her genitals despite her lack of invitation.” In the other, a man was “rolling with this bad bitch” and asked, “Yo, you gonna let me smash that ass?” When she said no, he was like, “OK, no pussy for me!”
“Which one is worse?” Noah asked. While “neither is ideal,” he said one is “crude” and the other is “against the law.”
“Trump can try to excuse his behavior by calling it ‘locker room talk.’ But you have to understand, he wasn’t in a locker room!” the host continued. “If you conduct locker room talk everywhere, it’s not the locker room, it’s you, motherfucker!”
Even worse, Trump's defense of "locker room" talk is not only absurd, but also hypocritical. "Everyone knows if you do locker room stuff outside the locker room, then there are serious consequences," Noah said before presenting a clip from a 2010 episode of The Apprentice in which Trump actually fired a female contestant for using what he viewed as crude language. "This is my boardroom," Trump said at the time. "It’s not a locker room."