Trump toyed with quitting after accessing the Hollywood “Pussy” tape

Donald Trump considered dropping out of the 2016 presidential race after the now infamous leaked Access Hollywood The tape saw him brag about women letting him “grab his pussy,” according to Kellyanne Conway.

Conway, a former Trump campaign manager and senior adviser, made the startling claim in her new memoir That’s the deala copy obtained by The Daily Beast ahead of its publication on Tuesday.

She writes that on the night of October 8, 2016, she and Trump secretly huddled around the corner from the 24th-floor elevator ramp of Trump Tower to consider the future of his candidacy.

She writes that Trump had seen reports that the GOP could “force him off the ticket or hold a vote to expel him” amid anger over his misogynistic comments captured on video a decade earlier.

“Should I get out? [of the race]?” Trump asked Conway, according to the book.

Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty

Conway’s description of what happened privately stands in stark contrast to Trump’s public statements. That’s what the candidate at the time said The Wall Street Journal late October 8 that there is “no chance of me quitting.”

“I never give up,” he added.

Conway said she wondered at the time if Trump was testing her or if he was really doubting himself.

According to her statement, she immediately dismissed the idea of ​​him quitting.

“You can’t actually,” she quotes herself, “unless you want to give up and throw the whole damn thing at Hillary.”

Trump reportedly shot back: “What do you mean I can’t?”

She said she then explained to him that dropping out of the race was out of the question at that point as early voting had started.

“I know you don’t like to lose,” she tells Trump, “but I also know you don’t like to give up.”

According to the book, Trump appeared to have doubts and asked Conway, “Am I going to lose? will we lose Can we still win?”

She then describes a scene in which she assured him that he would win and at the same time hit on him for the vulgar remarks he heard in the recordings. In addition to the “pussy” boast, Trump boasted to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush that he doesn’t “not even wait” before touching a woman – a statement that drew comparisons to sexual assault at the time.

At the time, Conway had defended her boss against such claims, telling CNN’s Dana Bash in October 2016 that people “should stop” using the term “sexual assault” to denote what Trump had described in the tapes.

However, in her new book, she claims she called him and told him his words were “disgusting” and “reprehensible”.

A Trump spokesman did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment Sunday morning. Conway could not be reached through her website early Sunday morning.

However, Conway’s book was largely kept under wraps prior to publication People The magazine published an excerpt last week in which Conway revealed how upset she was by husband George’s constant Twitter criticism of their boss.

“Obviously he cheated by tweeting,” she wrote.