Seeks to downplay

Blanche seeks to downplay the impact of Access Hollywood tape

"It was not a doomsday event," Trump's lawyer said.

KYLE CHENEY

Donald Trump’s attorneys are seeking to recast the release of the Access Hollywood tape in 2016 — a moment that rocked his campaign and caused some party leaders to contemplate his removal as GOP nominee — as a relatively limited concern for his campaign.

“The Access Hollywood tape is being set up in this trial to be something it is not,” Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche told jurors during his closing arguments. “It was not a doomsday event.”

Blanche’s description of the episode and its significance to Trump’s 2016 electoral prospects contrast starkly with Trump’s own response and recognition of the grave threat it posed to his campaign. Trump released a recorded statement addressing the tape — and apologizing for his remarks on the tape, in which he bragged about sexual assault. At the time, he faced rebukes from many in his own party amid concern that it would make him unelectable, particularly among women voters.

What Blanche didn’t mention — and indeed was not part of the trial record — is that despite the fears of a Trump freefall that pervaded after the Access Hollywood tape, other seismic events rocked the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and seemed to blunt the impact of the tape.

Within hours of the Access Hollywood release, Wikileaks began publishing emails stolen from Clinton and her advisers, and later in October 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey announced the reopening of a probe into Clinton’s handling of classified records, two similarly critical moments in the final weeks of the campaign.