Earlier this summer, we talked here on the site about the possibility that Trump might have a Dead Zone moment – a moment in which, in front of the entire nation, he would reveal to us something so absolutely shocking about himself that we could not help but to turn away collectively in disgust, once and for all. I believe, at the time, most of us thought it wouldn’t happen, as everything he’d said and done up to that point had just been written off as “Trump being Trump,” as though that were an adequate excuse for his boorish, vile and anti-social behavior. It seemed, at the time, that he was invincible. We’d heard him make countless misogynistic remarks, incite violence at his rallies, suggest with a smirk that gun rights advocates might want to save the nation by assassinating his rival, and even mock the disabled, but none of it seemed to matter to his supporters, who just kept watching and cheering. As he himself noted at the time, he could “shoot somebody and not lose voters.” Apparently, though, there may be a limit as to what some Trump supporters can stomach after all.

This past Friday evening, the Washington Post shared 2005 audio of Trump caught on a hot Access Hollywood mic telling the show’s host, Billy Bush, that he can essentially “do anything” he wants to women because of his celebrity. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump is heard telling Bush. “You can do anything.” Then, offering an example of what he can do to unsuspecting women, Trump is heard to say that he can just, “Grab ’em by the pussy.” [He also admitted on the tape to having recently tried to fuck a married women.]

Yes, the Republican nominee for President pretty much confessed to having engaged in sexual assault, forcing himself on women without consent.

And it looks as though that might might finally mark a turning point in the campaign. Over the last 24 hours, we saw a wholesale stampede away from Trump, as dozens of lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the embattled candidate. Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, one of the first to withdraw his endorsement, said I’m out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine.” Arizona Senator John McCain, who was the GOP nominee in 2008, followed shortly thereafter which the following statement. “No woman should ever be victimized by this kind of inappropriate behavior. He alone bears the burden of his conduct and alone should suffer the consequences,” he said. And, of course, those Republicans who had already come out against Trump, like former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, took the opportunity to pile on and add their voices to those, like McCain and Chaffetz, who were saying that this was truly beyond the pale. Romney took to Twitter to say, “Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America’s face to the world.”

While it’s doubtful that the defection of high ranking Republicans, like McCain, Chaffetz, and the dozens of others who have jumped ship since Friday night, will directly impact the support Trump currently enjoys from his predominantly small town, white, male base, I suspect we’re going to start seeing a trickle down effect as funds from the Republican National Committee begin moving away from Trump’s presidential campaign to down ticket contests, as the party attempts to keep its other candidates from being pulled under by the sinking Trump organization. And it looks as though it might already be starting. I just read mention that the RNC has started to pull back funding from Trump, and the Trump campaign has responded by cancelling ad buys in battleground states like Florida and Ohio. And, worse yet, Trump is being disinvited from campaign events, like one this weekend in Wisconsin, where he was supposed to have been campaigning with Senator Paul Ryan. While early polling seems to indicate that Trump supporters don’t care about his history relative to sexual assault, I can’t help but think that the poll numbers will begin to shift in time, as the ads stop running, and the media starts to portray Trump more and more as a candidate in crisis.

Of course, there’s the possibility that he could do or say something during tonight’s debate to shift things back in his favor. I suspect, for instance, that he’ll talk about Bill Clinton’s affairs, and insinuate that, however bad what he said in the 2005 tape may have been, Bill Clinton has said and done worse, but I don’t see how it will help him at this point. By taking the low road, and bringing up Bill Clinton’s history, he’s not going to bring party leadership back to his camp, and, without them, and the money that they control, I don’t see how Trump can stay competitive in battleground states.

Oh, and things are likely going to get worse for Trump. According to a story that broke last night, there are other hot mic recordings from the set of Trump’s reality television program The Apprentice that are even worse. And, as if that weren’t enough, women have started coming forward with stories of how the reality television celebrity had “grabbed their pussies”. So this really does appear to be the beginning of the end, barring a Clinton collapse or scandal of some sort.

For what it’s worth, I think that many in the GOP are happy that this happened. I suspect they’ve wanted to disengage from Trump for a while now, but they just haven’t had a way out. “Grab ’em by the pussy,” gave them that way out, a way to turn their backs on Trump without offending the far right base of the party who handed Trump the nomination.

The thing I find most interesting is the fact that, if Clinton does get into office because of this, and if she’s able to get progressive legislation enacted on, say global climate change, it could turn out that “Grab ’em by the pussy” is what saved the earth. I mean, we’re at the tipping point now relative to global warming. If significant action isn’t taken immediately to limit carbon emissions, our species is done for, and we certainly weren’t going to see any leadership from Trump, who has said in the past that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese… I don’t know how it will all play out. I think it’s very likely that we won’t act aggressively enough and we’ll go extinct. But what if this 2 minutes of audio from Access Hollywood is what ultimately saved us from that fate, or from Trump using a nuclear weapon? How strange would it be if this was a more impactful moment in human history, given what’s at stake, than when we landed on the moon? How surreal would that be?

While we’re at it, let’s also talk about hypocrisy… To all of you out there right now with friends and family members who are still defending Trump, please ask them what they would have said if audio had surfaced of President Obama telling someone that, because he was famous, he could do whatever he wanted to women. Just close your eyes and image for a moment, what the these friends and relatives of yours would be saying at this very moment, if they’d heard a recording of Obama saying that he, as a course of habit, just “grabbed” attractive women “by the pussy.”

And I think that’s what angers me the most about this. There’s a different standard for people on the right. When Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless dress, we were told by people on the right that it was unbefitting a First Lady. But, when photos come out that show Melania Trump posing nude with another woman, there wasn’t a peep. When Howard Dean screamed at a rally, we were told it showed that he lacked the temperament to be President. But, when Donald Trump called an actress a “fat pig” it’s somehow alright. When John Kerry changed his mind about tax cuts and the Iraq war, we were told that he wasn’t fit to be President because he was a “flip flopper.” But Trump can change be shown to have lied several time within the course of a single speech, seriously misrepresenting his past positions, and it’s just accepted. I have no problem with setting high standards for the office of President, but at least be honest with regard to how those standards are applied.

One last thing… If reality television fame allows you the power to “grab pussies” without consent, what does being the President of the United Sates of America, the most powerful person in the world, allow you to do? It’s kind of scary when you think about it. If he’s like this now, what would he be like as our President?

Lastly, if you’ve never seen Elia Kazan’s brilliant film A Face in the Crowd, which is about the rise and fall of a television personality slash conman with political aspirations, I can’t think of a better time to sit down with the family and check it out. I watched it last night with Clementine, and I think that it helped her to understand, at least to some extent, the situation that we’re in now with Trump, even if he didn’t, like the alcoholic drifter Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, portrayed by Andy Griffith in the film, come to fame from poverty, only to have it all unravel on live television, as a hot mic broadcast a glimpse of his true self into the homes of his millions and millions of fans. It’s an incredibly visionary piece of work, which foretold, among other things, the rise of celebrity culture in the United States and the popularity of television-enabled con men like Donald Trump, who drive big ratings by connecting with the masses through the telling of “simple truths” (which are actually anything but), all while serving their political and financial ends.

[note: The “Pussy Grabs Back” image at the top of the page was designed yesterday in collaboration between Feminist Fight Club, Amanda Duarte, Stella Marrs and Female Collective, and a href=”http://www.femalecollective.org/product/pussy-grabs-back”>there are t-sirts available. (Proceeds will be donated to RAINN, the nations’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.) I have no idea who made the second graphic.]