Yuri Gripas/Reuters
Access Hollywood on Monday hit back against President Trump’s reported claims that a 2005 tape of him making lewd comments about women was faked. The infamous recording—which surfaced weeks before the 2016 presidential election and triggered a spate of sexual-harassment allegations against the soon-to-be president—came back into the spotlight after The New York Times reported Trump had suggested the recording was “not authentic.” Access Hollywood host Natalie Morales had a blunt comeback to that suggestion, saying in a Monday broadcast that “the tape is very real.” “Remember his excuse at the time was ‘locker-room talk.’ He said every one of those words,” she said. Arianne Zucker, an actress who was seen greeting Trump on the tape shortly after he boasted that his celebrity status allowed him to grope women, also commented on the controversy Monday. Questioning how such a recording “could be fake” in an interview with Anderson Cooper, Zucker asked why Trump would “apologize for something and then renege on it” if he had doubts about the tape’s authenticity.