“Grab ’em by the pussy”

“Grab ’em by the pussy” is the most notorious phrase in Donald Trump’s 2005 recorded remarks about women. Its public release in October 2016 gave blunt language to conduct that Megan Twohey had spent months investigating, and sharpened the question at the center of her reporting: whether women’s accounts of unwanted advances would be treated as credible evidence or dismissed as unsubstantiated claims.

The Recording and Its Context

On Friday, October 7, Megan Twohey was speaking by phone with a source when colleagues across the newsroom began rising from their desks and gathering around televisions. The Washington Post had obtained a snippet of an audiotape from the 2005 entertainment program Access Hollywood. In it, Trump described kissing women without waiting for permission and asserted that celebrity status allowed him to do anything, culminating in the phrase that became its most recognizable line.

The words landed against an existing investigation, not in a vacuum. After returning from her honeymoon, Megan Twohey had continued reporting on Trump and asking whether other women had allegations of forcible kissing, groping, or worse. The tape seemed to confirm the behavior she had been piecing together. Within a week, Megan Twohey and Barbaro had an article nearly ready featuring two women who said Trump’s boasts matched their experiences. Jessica Leeds alleged that, during a first-class flight from Dallas to New York City in the early 1980s, Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt; Rachel Crooks had also sent The New York Times an account of her allegation.

Denial and the Question of Proof

Trump apologized for his words, then characterized them as “locker-room talk.” Two days after the tape surfaced, during an October 9 presidential debate, he denied ever kissing women without permission or grabbing intimate parts of their bodies. When asked whether he had actually done what he had boasted about, he answered, “No, I have not.” The contrast between the recording and the denial made the phrase more than a vulgar boast: it became a public contest over whether speech that sounded like an admission could be separated from the behavior it described.

For the reporters, the tape supplied context but did not replace corroboration. The subsequent article was built around women’s accounts, including the particulars they had provided to the paper. The distinction mattered: the recording made their allegations newly legible to a broad audience, while their individual testimony gave the reporting its evidentiary substance.

A Political Shock and a Reporting Opening

The phrase also became a measure of public anger. When the Times editors considered the fallout from Bill O’Reilly’s departure from Fox, they recalled that women had vented frustration after Trump’s comments as well. Their assessment was practical as well as cultural: persuading women to speak on the record about harassment remained difficult, but the moment might offer an unusual opening for candor.

The O’Reilly investigation then suggested a method for pursuing stories that rarely began with someone volunteering a complete account. Reporters could examine patterns of alleged misconduct and the systems that concealed them. The editors assigned journalists to investigate industries including technology and academia, as well as low-income workplaces where workers had little visibility, intense economic pressure, and fewer options for recourse. In that way, the tape’s public shock fed into a broader inquiry: not only what powerful individuals had done, but how workplaces and settlements could keep allegations difficult to expose.

The Phrase’s Wider Resonance

The book later places the reaction to Trump’s comments alongside a gathering of women whose experiences and circumstances differed sharply. At Gwyneth Paltrow’s home, participants included Ashley Judd, Kim Lawson, and Zelda Perkins. The setting made inequality visible: Lawson had recently been homeless and was earning ten dollars an hour at McDonald’s, while Paltrow’s spacious home embodied a markedly different economic position. Paltrow raised a glass to Judd for being the first actress to speak on the record in the initial Weinstein story, recognizing the risks of being first.

The gathering also showed that speaking out did not carry the same meaning for everyone. Rowena Chiu, who had not yet gone public and whose family—apart from her husband—did not know her story, spoke about the scarcity of Asian voices in public accounts of harassment and the pressure of a model-minority culture not to make waves. Lawson described filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and marching in a September strike, where she spoke, gave interviews, and pushed her daughter in a stroller. Perkins recalled testifying to members of Parliament about confidentiality agreements. Their accounts do not reduce to a single phrase or a single political moment. Instead, they show the larger consequence of a public rupture: women in very different positions could recognize the value, the cost, and the possibility of making their experiences heard.