By Jeremy Diamond,CNN
WARNING: This story contains graphic language.
Donald Trump issued a defiant apology Saturday morning for lewd and sexually aggressive remarks he made a decade ago — and then made it clear he is girding himself for a nasty political battle.
The GOP presidential nominee posted a 90-second video just after midnight on social media, telling voters that he is not a “perfect person” and that the words captured by a hot mic in 2005 “don’t reflect who I am.” But he also left no doubt he will not allow the comments to deal him a fatal political blow, as some began predicting Friday night.
“I said it, I was wrong and I apologize,” Trump said, before adding that his travels and encounters while campaigning for president have “changed” him.
But Trump quickly pivoted back onto the attack, raising Bill Clinton’s sex scandals and Hillary Clinton’s role in discrediting women who indeed had affairs with her husband.
“I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims.”
And in closing, Trump added ominously: “We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.”
While Trump refuted the lewd terms in which he discussed women in the 2005 tape, the Republican nominee did not apologize for or address the behavior he said in that conversation that he engaged in toward women, including that he could “grab them by the pussy” and that he would sometimes “just start kissing them.”
Trump’s foreshadowing that he will raise Bill Clinton’s affairs and sex abuse allegations from the 1990s “in the coming days” suggest that the Republican nominee is switching gears after suggesting as recently as Thursday night that he would not raise those scandals in the debate on Sunday.
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