Spokane’s Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress, rebuked Donald Trump for remarks he made in 2005 about groping and kissing women without permission.
Congress’ highest-ranking Republican woman, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, criticized Donald Trump’s remarks, revealed Friday, in which he brags about groping and kissing women without their permission in a lewd 2005 recording.
“It is never appropriate to condone unwanted sexual advances or violence against women,” McMorris Rodgers, who represents Spokane and is the No. 4 Republican in the House, said in a prepared statement Friday evening. “Mr. Trump must realize that it has no place in public or private conversations.”
The recording, first published by The Washington Post, features Trump bragging in crude language about making sexual advances on a married woman and about his penchant for kissing women without their permission.
“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful, I just start kissing them,” Trump says on the recording. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.
“When you’re a star they let you do it,” he said. “You can do anything.”
McMorris Rodgers offered a tepid endorsement of Trump ahead of Washington’s May primary, adding at the time that she “won’t be shy” about criticizing him.
She had previously criticized Trump in March for his long history of degrading remarks toward women.
“I think his comments regarding women and other comments, I find them inappropriate,” she told The New York Times at the time. “I find them hurtful and I think they are hurtful to the party, a party that has been founded on equal opportunity for all.”
A spokesman for McMorris Rodgers did not respond Friday when asked if she still intends to vote for him.