Watch Gen Z Discover How Creepy Trump Is for the 1st Time

In October 2016, weeks before voting in my first election, I was a freshman in college sitting in a friend’s dorm room when I heard the infamous Access Hollywood tape for the first time. Prior to listening, I’d read a couple of pull quotes from the hot mic tape from 2005, in which Donald Trump and Billy Bush crudely talk about their sexual conquests and, in Trump’s case, openly brag about sexual assault. But to hear “grab ’em by the pussy” from his mouth, I remember feeling physical chills at the thought of someone like this potentially becoming the most powerful person in the world. 

We all know what happened next. 

But even among voters who continue to see Trump as an existential threat, and despite the fact that he was found civilly liable for sexual abuse in 2023, there’s been an increasingly irony-pilled numbness that’s washed over the nation. Between his undeniably silly episodes—from dumb, comical tweets, to viral moments with trick-or-treaters and children who believe in Santa—that almost began to humanize him and the near-ceaseless political controversies over the last eight years, the memory of the Access Hollywood tape was pushed further and further out of our collective memory.

Now, thanks to a new TikTok trend, young women who are voting in their first election are hearing the Access Hollywood tape for the first time. Initially, I was shocked by the idea that anyone somehow hadn’t heard it yet—but then I realized many of these first-time voters were only about 10 years old when the audio came out. Their horrified reactions are a sobering reminder that Harris isn’t just running against some fumbling, aging grandpa, who’s spent the last several months desperately trying to walk back his every act of anti-abortion extremism—she’s running against a sexual predator who said on tape that, if you’re a man who holds power, you can do whatever you want and get away with it. 

The audio first reappeared at the end of October when the TikTok account Republican Voters Against Trump reshared the footage from 2016. It’s since swept the internet, with Gen Z women and girls sharing hundreds of videos of themselves reacting with shock and disgust. Their raw reactions are biting: As Vox’s Constance Grady writes, we should all still be shocked, too.

@toxicthotsyndrome @miss redacted✨🪩🩷🇵🇸 ♬ original sound – RepublicanVotersAgainstTrump

In one video posted over the weekend, with more than 142,000 likes as of Thursday, two college-age women appear viscerally disgusted throughout. Another TikTok with over 17,000 likes shows a young woman appearing exhausted, with the caption, “This is the man that Christian conservatives think is fit to run our country.” Other TikToks with the audio, featuring exasperated, disgusted teens, feature captions like, “How is anyone OK with this,” “Just a reminder this is the man on the ballot this year,“ “this is who fathers with daughters are voting for,” and, my personal favorite, “How did it ever go beyond this moment.” This is now the third election I’m voting in with Donald J. Trump at the top of the ticket, and I’m wondering that myself! Another TikTok with the audio is captioned, “When your father who has 6 daughters and 4 granddaughters who is also a men’s pastor is voting for this man again. It’s honestly a slap in our face.” 

@savray91 Let’s not forget I almost died from an ectopic pregnancy when I was 22, thank god roe v wade was still a thing back then. #kamalaharris2024🇺🇸💙 #wearenevergoingback #dumptrump #trumpisadisgrace #voteblue #pnw ♬ original sound – RepublicanVotersAgainstTrump

@jules_is_okHow did it ever go beyond this moment??♬ original sound – RepublicanVotersAgainstTrump

On Wednesday, the same day that a 28th woman came forward and alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in 1993, Trump declared at a rally that he’ll “protect” American women “whether the women like it or not.” At a Thursday night rally, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz quoted Trump, and also seemed to reference the surging TikTok trend: “[Trump] said, ‘I’m gonna do it whether the women are gonna like it or not.’ That’s how this guy has lived his life. That’s why he was on the Access Hollywood tape, and that’s why he ended up in court.”

In response, one Twitter user quote-tweeted a clip of Walz’s remarks with a meme depicting cartoonish, existential dread, captioned, “Trump has been around for so long we have to rehash his lore to prevent history from repeating itself.” Sharing an article about the TikTok trend, the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant wrote on Bluesky this week, “We have been trapped in the trump campaign for so long that subsequent generations have a ‘discovering the access hollywood tape.’” 

Walz: “He said ‘I’m gonna do it whether the women are gonna like it or not.’ That’s how this guy has lived his life. That’s why he was on the Access Hollywood tape, and that’s why he ended up in court.” pic.twitter.com/MPb5cDXxZM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2024

But, in the wake of two new sexual misconduct allegations against Trump, to almost no reaction, maybe we should all revisit the Access Hollywood tape. Sure, the simple reality is that almost nothing Trump says, does, or is accused of is surprising anymore. But the Guardian’s Moira Donegan also contends the non-reaction to sexual misconduct allegations against our maybe-next president is “a sign of how far we have fallen” in the national political climate. Unlike the fallout of the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, Donegan writes that the latest allegations barely made headlines: “This time, there were no calls for Donald Trump to drop out of the race… no handwringing over whether his violent and vulgar treatment of women and girls might disqualify him from the power and supposed honor of the position that he’s seeking. No one bothered to point out that someone who assaults women—let alone someone who does so as routinely and prolifically as Trump is said to have done – does not deserve to be the president. Even the Democrats mostly shrugged.”

Eight years ago, the Access Hollywood tape should have been disqualifying; teens today are shocked it wasn’t. So, regardless of what happens this week, the next time you find yourself feeling exhausted, jaded, or desensitized to Trump’s vulgarity, listen to that tape again and remember what it felt like to hear “grab ’em by the pussy” for the first time.