uproar

Donald Trump boasted crudely about groping women in a 2005 video recording made a few months after his marriage to Melania Trump, saying “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”

The recording, obtained by the Washington Post and released Friday, features Trump making lewd comments about women and saying some let him grab them in the crotch.

The disclosure plunged Trump’s campaign into crisis as GOP leaders roundly condemned their party’s presidential nominee just a month before the election.

“No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan had planned to campaign with Trump on Saturday in his Wisconsin congressional district, but said Trump was no longer attending the event.

“I am sickened by what I heard today,” said Ryan, who has previously faulted Trump for making what he called racist comments about a Latino federal judge.

“Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”

Trump is heard in the recording talking with Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” as they were riding a bus to the set of “Days of Our Lives” for a Trump cameo.

“I moved on her and I failed — I’ll admit it,” Trump is heard saying about a woman who was identified Friday by “Access Hollywood” as Nancy O’Dell, a former host of the show. Using a vulgar term, Trump says he tried to have sex with her and mentions that she was married at the time.

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Trump then talks about taking the woman furniture shopping in an attempt to seduce her.

“She wanted to get some furniture,” Trump says. “I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’”

“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married,” Trump says. “Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

It’s unclear from the recording whether he was already married to Melania Trump when he says these events occurred.

Trump released a terse statement when the Post published the story.

“This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago,” Trump said. “Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”

In a video he posted late Friday night on Facebook, Trump apologized again, but also dismissed the uproar as “nothing more than a distraction.”

“Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am,” said Trump, whose frequent derogatory comments about women have proved a major liability.

Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent, reacted on Twitter: “This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president.”

For Trump, the timing of the recording’s release could hardly be worse: It came two days before a crucial debate in St. Louis — one of his last opportunities to shift public opinion and overcome Clinton’s persistent edge in the polls. Early voting has already begun in some battleground states.

Trump is struggling to improve his dismal standing among female voters. Clinton, who would be the nation’s first female president, was leading Trump among women 53% to 33% in a Quinnipiac poll released Friday.

To the dismay of fellow Republicans who fear he is hurting the party’s down-ballot candidates in the Nov. 8 election, Trump has been attacking Clinton for “enabling” her husband’s extramarital affairs.

Last weekend, Trump also accused Clinton of being disloyal to her husband, offering no evidence for the allegation.

In the 2005 recording, Trump boasts of how he likes to make advances on women.

“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,” he says. “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

He uses another vulgarity to describe how he gropes women in the crotch. “You can do anything,” he says.

Trump’s history of making derogatory remarks about women has dogged him for more than a year.

In the first GOP primary debate, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly asked him to explain why he’d called women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”

Angered by the question. Trump later called Kelly a bimbo and said she had “blood coming out of her wherever,” widely construed as a remark about menstruation.

Clinton and her allies have hammered Trump in television and radio ads for his caustic comments about women dating as far back as the 1980s. At their first debate last week in New York, Clinton castigated Trump for calling a Latina beauty pageant winner “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”

Trump later criticized the woman and urged voters to check out a sex tape that she’d allegedly appeared in. There was no sex tape.

Earlier this week, Trump said some of his past comments about women were for purposes of “entertainment.”

Bush, now a co-anchor on NBC’s “Today” show, released a statement saying he was “embarrassed and ashamed” by his conversation with Trump.

“It’s no excuse, but this happened eleven years ago — I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along,” said Bush, a cousin of former President George W. Bush. “I’m very sorry.”

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Twitter: @finneganLAT

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UPDATES:

10:25 p.m. This article was updated with Trump’s video apology.

7:05 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction from Republicans.

4:50 p.m.: This article was updated with changes.

This article was originally published at 3:50 p.m.

US ambassador Tom Barrack has infuriated people in Lebanon and beyond, after he told reporters there not to be ‘animalistic’ during a press conference. Soraya Lennie looks at what’s behind the uproar – and how it involves the idea of Orientalism.

Swiss watchmaker Swatch has apologised and pulled an ad featuring a model pulling the corners of his eyes, after the image prompted uproar among Chinese social media users.

Critics said the pose resembled the racist “slanted eye” historically used to mock Asians.

Calls for a boycott of Swatch products grew on Chinese social media as the ad went viral.

Swatch said it had “taken note of the recent concerns regarding the portrayal of a model”.

“We sincerely apologize for any distress or misunderstanding this may have caused,” the company said in a statement on Saturday.

“We treat this matter with the utmost importance and have immediately removed all related materials worldwide.”

But the apology failed to appease critics.

Swatch is “only afraid for its profits,” one Weibo user said. “You can apologise, but I will not forgive.”

“They make money from us and still dare to discriminate against Chinese people. We would be spineless if we don’t boycott it out of China,” another Weibo user said.

Swatch gets around 27% of its revenue from China, Hong Kong and Macau – though it has seen declining sales in China amid the country’s economic slowdown, according to Reuters news agency.

The company also produces Omega, Longines and Tissot watches.

In recent years Chinese consumers have organised boycotts against perceived insults to their culture or threats to national interests.

In 2021 there was a widespread Chinese boycott against global fashion brands like H&M, Nike and Adidas after they expressed concern over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang province.

Last year, some tried to boycott Japanese clothing store Uniqlo after the company said it did not source cotton from Xinjiang.

Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana was also the target of such a boycott in 2018, after it posted videos showing a Chinese model using chopsticks clumsily to eat Italian food. Its products were pulled from Chinese e-commerce sites and the brand cancelled its Shanghai fashion show as critics said the ad depicted Chinese women in a stereotypical and racist way.

New Delhi, India – What if Michael had died instead of Sonny in The Godfather? Or if Rose had shared the debris plank, and Jack hadn’t been left to freeze in the Atlantic in Titanic*?

Eros International, one of India’s largest production houses, with more than 4,000 films in its catalogue, has decided to explore this sort of what-if scenario. It has re-released one of its major hits, Raanjhanaa, a 2013 romantic drama, in cinemas – but has used artificial intelligence (AI) to change its tragic end, in which the male lead dies.

In the AI-altered version, Kundan (played by popular actor Dhanush), a Hindu man who has a doomed romance with a Muslim woman, lives. But the film’s director, Aanand L Rai, is furious.

“The idea that our work can be taken and modified by a machine, then dressed up as innovation, is deeply disrespectful,” Rai said, adding that the entire film crew had been kept in the dark about the re-release.

“What makes it worse is the complete ease and casualness with which it’s been done,” said Rai. “It is a reckless takeover that strips the work of its intent, its context, and its soul.”

This is the first time a film studio has re-released a movie with AI alterations, anywhere in the world, and it has also caused an uproar among critics, filmmakers and film lovers.

Here is what we know so far about why this move has been so controversial, and what the legal and ethical issues are.

How has the film been altered?

Eros International, a prominent film studio, has re-released a Tamil-dubbed version of the film, Raanjhanaa, titled Ambikapathy, with an alternate, AI-generated ending.

This altered version, which significantly deviates from the original film’s climax, screened at cinemas in Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, on August 1.

At the end of the original movie, the lead male character, Kundan, lies dead, covered in bruises from his injuries, in a hospital with his lover sitting by his side, crying. In the AI-altered ending, however, Kundan does not die. Instead, he opens his eyes and starts to stand up.

How have people reacted to the re-release?

The release of the AI-altered version prompted immediate objections from the film’s original creators. Dhanush, a Tamil actor, issued a statement noting that “this alternate ending stripped the film of its soul” and that the re-release had “completely disturbed” him.

With its changed ending, Ranjhaanna is “not the film I committed to 12 years ago”, he said. The actor added that the use of AI to alter films “is a deeply concerning precedent for both art and artists [that] threatens the integrity of storytelling and the legacy of cinema”.

Rai, the director, shared a detailed note on Instagram condemning the move. “Let me say this as clearly as I can: I do not support or endorse the AI-altered version … It is unauthorised. And whatever it claims to be, it is not the film we intended, or made.”

“This was never just a film to us. It was shaped by human hands, human flaws, and human feeling,” Rai added. “To cloak a film’s emotional legacy in a synthetic cape without consent is not a creative act. It’s an abject betrayal of everything we built.”

Richard Allen, professor of film and media art at City University of Hong Kong, said it seems inevitable that AI-altering will become a mainstream method of filmmaking in global film industries.

“If producers think they can make more money out of old content by using AI, they will do so,” Allen told Al Jazeera.

Is AI-altering legal?

Rai has said that he is investigating legal options to challenge the re-release of this movie.

Eros International insists that its actions are perfectly legal, however, and has refused to retract the re-release.

“This re-release is not a replacement – it is a creative reinterpretation, clearly labelled and transparently positioned,” said Pradeep Dwivedi, chief executive of Eros International Media.

Dwivedi noted that under Indian copyright law, the producer of a film (in this case, Eros International) is deemed its author and primary rights-holder, meaning that the production house is the first owner of copyright for the film.

He said the film studio is “the exclusive producer and copyright holder, holds full legal and moral rights” under Indian laws. He described the alternate ending to the movie as “a new emotional lens to today’s audiences”.

The studio, which has released more than 4,000 movies globally, will “embrace generative AI as the next frontier in responsible storytelling”, Dwivedi said, adding that Eros International is “uniquely positioned to bridge cinematic legacy with future-ready formats”.

What about the ethics of this?

Mayank Shekhar, an Indian film critic, said the real issue with AI-altering is one of ethics: doing it without the expressed consent of the creators – writer, director and actors – involved.

“What’s left then is simply the legalese of who owns the copyright, or who paid for the product, and is hence the sole producer, and therefore the owner of the work,” Shekhar said. “Technically, I suppose, or so it seems, what Eros has done isn’t illegal – it’s certainly unethical.”

In his statement, Eros International’s Dwivedi said that every era of cinema has faced the clash between “Luddites and Progressives”. He added: “When sound replaced silence, when colour replaced black-and-white, when digital challenged celluloid, and now, when AI meets narrative.”

Dwivedi insisted that reimagining the movie’s ending was not “artificial storytelling,” but “augmented storytelling, a wave of the future”.

Has AI been used to alter films before?

AI has not been used to alter the storyline of an existing movie by its own producers or crew for re-release before this.

However, it has been used for post-production purposes in movies – such as voice dubbing or computer-generated imagery (CGI) enhancements. Its use was a flashpoint in Hollywood during the labour protests of 2023, which resulted in new guidelines for the use of the technology.

In an interview, The Brutalist’s Oscar-nominated editor, David Jancso, said that the production had used a Ukrainian software company, Respeecher, to make the lead actors, Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, sound more “authentic” when they spoke Hungarian in the film.

Similarly, filmmaker David Fincher supervised a 4K restoration of his celebrated crime-thriller, “Se7en” for its 30th anniversary this year, using AI to correct technical flaws in focus and colour.

Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO, said last month that the company had used generative AI to produce visual effects for the first time on screen in its original series, El Eternauta, or The Eternaut. Netflix has also been exploring the use of trailers personalised for subscribers’ user profiles.

Reuters reported that Netflix had also tested AI to synchronise actors’ lip movements with dubbed dialogue to “improve the viewing experience”, quoting company sources.

Will AI alterations become the norm in cinema?

Allen said the alteration to Raanjhanaa felt different from the way AI has been used to enhance movies in the past. “There are so many things that AI doctoring might do to a movie,” he said.

However, he added: “We won’t necessarily lose sight of the definitive version, unless newly released versions are mislabelled as restorations or original versions of the movies themselves, which goes back to the ethical frameworks.”

Shekhar said: “The larger issue is simply of regulation. AI is too new for laws to catch up yet.

“The fact is, a work of art ought to be protected from predators. And respected for its own worth, whether or not somebody likes the ending of a film!”

An alternative ending to a film also needs to be plausible.

In 2022, Titanic director James Cameron said he commissioned a forensic analysis, involving a hypothermia expert, that proved there would have been no way for both Jack and Rose to survive on that infamous floating door. Jack “had to die”, Cameron said then.

And AI can’t change that science.

WASHINGTON — Even before he and his family flew home from a Passover visit to Israel last week, 37-year-old former law professor Marshall Breger knew it was going to be bad.

As President Reagan’s special assistant for public liaison with Jewish groups, Breger was besieged by horrified Israeli associates when they learned that Reagan planned to visit a West German military cemetery containing the graves of Nazi storm troopers.

“It was a tremendous outburst, more in pain than in anger,” said Berger, who has worked nonstop, 18 hours a day trying to assuage the feelings of American Jews since returning to his office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.

‘Tough Couple of Weeks’

Breger is not alone in his discomfort. With the Bitburg cemetery controversy still escalating, Congress shunning Reagan’s pleas for continued military aid to the anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua, the deficit soaring and the economy beginning to sputter, the President is having what Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.) called “a tough couple of weeks.”

Laxalt, Reagan’s close friend and 1984 campaign chairman, insisted that “we’re not at the hand-wringing stage,” but other Republicans–including some members of the White House staff–are not so sure. After more than four years of reigning supreme in Washington as the “great communicator,” they fear that Reagan may have stumbled into the kind of symbolic trouble that has brought lasting grief to other presidents.

The furor over Reagan’s insistence on carrying through his plan for a May 5 wreath-laying ceremony at West Germany’s Bitburg military cemetery comes at a time when the Administration is under bipartisan attack in Congress on both the economic and foreign policy fronts.

Mounting Protests

The mounting protests over the Bitburg visit from Jewish leaders–joined now by Catholic and Protestant leaders–threatens to diminish the President’s popularity and erode his reputation for invincible political footwork.

And that, some of his aides warn privately, could impair Reagan’s effectiveness in dealing with Congress, jeopardize his second-term goals and loom as a factor in the 1986 elections when the GOP–with 22 senators up for reelection–will be fighting to retain control of the Senate.

The concern among Republicans is intensified by the widespread feeling that this year’s dramatic shake-up in the White House senior staff has increased the level of conservative ideology in those immediately surrounding the President but reduced the level of political sensitivity.

But, in a long political career, the 74-year old President has stumbled more than once and has shown remarkable resiliency in recovering lost ground. Thus, few in Washington–Democrats or Republicans–are prepared to bet that Reagan will not emerge once again with his political strength intact.

Reagan, whose trip to Europe next week was supposed to be focused primarily on the annual economic summit and only secondarily on commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, has stuck firmly to his plan for the Bitburg ceremony, insisting that he is living up to a commitment to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The furor over the Bitburg visit shows no sign of abating, however, and it is the kind of symbolic issue that sometimes can fundamentally alter the public’s perception of a leader.

Coast-to-Coast Protests

It has drawn coast-to-coast protests, including a statement signed by 53 U.S. senators urging that it “be erased from the President’s schedule.” And on Tuesday, the Rev. Aurie Brouwer, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, and Eugene Fisher, head of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations, both issued statements criticizing the visit.

White House aide Breger, who was not directly involved in the decision to visit Bitburg, is still being swamped with protests and does not expect the controversy to die down.

The Bitburg ceremony was “an all-consuming” topic, Breger said, at a meeting he addressed of 1,500 Jewish leaders of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee in Alexandria, Va. Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) also addressed the meeting and called for Reagan to cancel the trip.

Graceful Compromise

Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.), who served as President Gerald R. Ford’s chief of staff, Tuesday urged that Reagan seek a way out of his dilemma. “My feeling is that the time is ripe for him to make a graceful compromise and not go to the cemetery,” Cheney said. “I’m afraid it will do him grievous damage if he does go.”

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) agreed. “He ought to drop the trip to the cemetery. He’s suffering needless antipathy. He is diluting and eroding the enormous good will that was his before and after the election. A lot of people who strongly support almost everything else the President has done are mystified by this and by the bad advice he has gotten on making this visit.”

At the White House, Reagan has been warned that not only his politics but his place in history may be jeopardized by the cemetery visit.

‘Nazi Trip’

Reagan needs to realize, one aide said, that his trip will be “perceived not as an economic summit trip but as a Nazi trip. The Nazi symbolism will overshadow everything else. When the presidential motorcade goes down an autobahn, it will be reported that he is traveling on a road Hitler built in 1936. . . . “

The only hope now, the aide said, “is if Kohl realizes what the Bitburg visit is doing and takes the initiative to cancel it, or if Mrs. Reagan realizes what it’s going to do to his image in history.”

The controversy comes at a particularly bad time for Reagan–just as he has put his prestige on the line in uphill congressional battles for aid to the contra rebels in Nicaragua and for a budget proposal that is under such heavy attack that he scheduled a televised address to the nation tonight to apply public pressure to Congress.

Even before the Bitburg controversy, some Republicans had questioned whether Reagan, who enjoyed extraordinary success in Congress during his first term when he concentrated on only one or two major issues at a time, had overloaded his legislative agenda this year.

Political Capital Spent

One of them, Rep. Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), House minority leader, also suggested that the President expended so much political capital in winning narrow victories for the production of 21 MX missiles that he will be unable to prevail on other important legislative initiatives.

Reagan’s long-awaited tax-simplification proposal–hailed by the Administration as a keystone of his second term–will not be submitted to Congress until sometime after he returns May 10 from his European trip. But special interests already are lobbying heavily against any provisions that might adversely affect them.

Although clearly concerned about Reagan’s mounting problems and the dilemma that he faces over the Bitburg visit, Laxalt thinks the President will ride out the controversy.

Bitburg Called ‘Disaster’

Laxalt himself said he has not heard much about Bitburg on Capitol Hill. “About the only comments I’ve heard,” he said, “came from several senators who said the Jewish reaction had been so violent it might be counterproductive. At least, that was what they were getting in their mail from back home.”

However, a key Republican congressman, speaking on condition he not be identified, called the Bitburg visit “a disaster” and added: “A lot of guys on the Hill are saying, ‘Why doesn’t the President get off this trip?.’ ”

“I can’t understand why the President is so damn stubborn on this,” he said. “Usually, he’s the epitome of the guy who can reverse field and come up smelling like roses.”

US president threatens to sue US newspaper for publishing details of lurid letter he allegedly wrote to deceased sex offender in 2003.

United States President Donald Trump has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to request a court release grand jury testimony in the Jeffrey Epstein case, as uproar over the controversy widens.

The case of deceased high-profile sex offender Epstein has dominated news recently after the Trump administration reversed course last week on its pledge to release documents it had suggested contained damning revelations about Epstein and his alleged elite clientele.

That reversal enraged many of Trump’s most loyal followers and prompted allegations that his administration is covering up lurid details of Epstein’s crimes to protect rich and powerful figures.

Trump himself had been associated with Epstein and once called him a friend.

“Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late on Thursday.

Shortly after Trump’s statement, Attorney General Bondi said on social media that the Justice Department was ready to ask the court on Friday to unseal the grand jury transcripts.

“President Trump – we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts,” Bondi wrote.

The latest development comes just hours after Trump threatened to sue The Wall Street Journal after it published a story about an alleged risque letter he wrote to Epstein that featured a drawing of a naked woman. The WSJ story, which quickly reverberated around the US capital, says the note to Epstein bearing Trump’s signature was part of a collection assembled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.

The newspaper said it reviewed the letter but did not print an image.

“The Editor of The Wall Street Journal… was told directly by [White House Press Secretary] Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump, that the letter was a FAKE,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

“Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway,” he said.

“President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. [Rupert] Murdoch, shortly. The Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist,” he added.

The alleged letter, which Trump denies writing, involves several lines of typewritten text, contained in an outline of a naked woman drawn with a marker.

“The future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal reported.

“The letter concludes: ‘Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.’”

Trump told the WSJ: “This is not me. This is a fake thing.”

“I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”

Epstein took his own life in a New York prison in 2019 – during Trump’s first term – after being charged with sex trafficking in a scheme where he allegedly groomed young and underage women for sexual abuse by the rich and powerful.

The Trump-supporting far-right has long latched onto the scandal, claiming the existence of a still-secret list of Epstein’s powerful clients and that the late financier was, in fact, murdered in his cell as part of a cover-up.