Trump appears to reference vulgar comments made by Access Hollywood in his closing statements to his supporters

Donald Trump‘s closing remarks to his supporters in the crucial last days before election day have appeared repeatedly in reference to the time he was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.

At at least two campaign rallies in recent days, the crowd has laughed with him as he joked about it a recording in which he said: “grab them by the p****” – published just weeks before he won the 2016 presidential election.

In North Carolina On Monday, he said that mechanical arms that latch onto a SpaceX rocket “grab that thing like you grab your beautiful baby.”

“See? Much better. Years ago I would have said something different, but I’ve learned,” he said. “I would have been a little riskier.”

At a meeting Virginia on Saturday he said: “You see those arms as if you were holding your beautiful baby, your beautiful child.”

“Before, I would have said, ‘You’re taking your…girlfriend,'” he said.

“Now I don’t say that anymore,” he continued. ‘I say: ‘as if you took your child.’ And those big arms came in and they grabbed that suction cup and held it in place like you were holding your child. And I said, ‘That’s incredible.’”

On the so-called Access to Hollywood tape, recorded on the set of a soap opera during an entertainment news program in 2005, Trump is heard saying: “I’m automatically attracted to beauty – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And if you’re a star, they let you do that. You can do anything. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything.”

In a 90 second apology, hours later The Washington Post When he released the recording, Trump said that “anyone who knows me knows these words do not reflect who I am” and “I was wrong, and I apologize.” He then bashed his opponent Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, saying they are “running our country into the ground” and that “there is 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,” he continued.

His campaign also dismissed the comments as “locker room talk.”

Trump would be found later liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll in an incident at a New York City department store in the 1990s. The federal judge overseeing her defamation case against the former president said the jury had essentially found that Trump raped her, in “plain modern parlance.”

The release of the tape in 2016 arrived when Trump and his campaign and lawyers tried to hide politically damaging stories about his alleged affairs from the publicculminating in a deal to buy the silence of adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose 2006 story of having sex with the president central to Trump’s criminal conviction in New York.

Trump was convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying company records in an attempt to disguise his fees to now-former attorney Michael Cohen — who arranged a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels — as mere “legal fees.”

During the process, his former communications director testified that the release of the Access to Hollywood tape was a “damaging development” that threatened to derail the campaign in a busy and critical period before the election.

“It’s hard to describe,” Hope Hicks testified earlier this year. “It was certainly concerning. And I had a good feeling this was going to be a huge story and dominate the news cycle for the next few days, at least… It was a damaging development.

The story “pulled us back a little bit, and it would be hard to overcome,” she said.