After a wild and unprecedented last 100 days, it is officially Election Day in America, when the nation will decide whether they want Vice President Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to be their next president.
It is the third run for Trump, who though won in 2016, has never won the popular vote, and should he win this week, would become the first president to have been indicted twice, and to be a convicted felon.
His political career infamously kicked off almost ten years ago, on June 16, 2015, when he descended down the escalators of his Trump Tower in Manhattan, and established a platform that today has only become even more negative and defined by vitriol than it already was back then.
Though even then, the former reality star was already making shockingly offensive comments that Democrats and Republicans alike couldn't imagine a presidential candidate could ever get away with, there was a particular one that, though it didn't cost him the election like many immediately assumed it would, still made history and transformed the nation's relationship with Trump, particularly women's.
That is the infamous Access Hollywood tape, which, now that there are approximately 41 million members of Gen Z eligible to vote for the first time, has regained notoriety across TikTok for people learning about it for the first time, and letting it influence their vote. Here's what happened and what's new.
© GettyWhat Trump said on tape
One month before Election Day in 2016, many thought Trump's political ambitions were over, when the Washington Post released a tape from 2005 in which Trump insinuated that he could sexually harass women without their consent.
In a conversation with Billy Bush, who was fired from the Today Show when the tape was released, he is heard saying: "You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
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Bush then replied: "Whatever you want," after which Trump said the now infamous words: "Grab them by the [expletive]. You can do anything."
© GettyWhat Gen Z is saying now
Trump won the presidency just a month after the world heard that tape. Though he now has a long list of more offensive comments and even an insurrection to his name, with women's issues being such a pivotal aspect of this election, the tape is reaching new ears and making an impact all over again.
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This month, 22-year-old Soleil Golden made the tape go viral again when she shared a video of herself and a friend reacting to his comments on TikTok, a video captioned: "this is who fathers. with daughters. are voting for," that now has over one million views.
Speaking with Teen Vogue about it, Soleil shared: "The fact that fathers and women with daughters and people who they would want to protect around somebody like that are still voting for that man really made me think, maybe they haven't heard this whole thing or maybe they've forgotten about it."
