A poll conducted by Politico/Morning Consult allowed respondents to view the  lewd “Access Hollywood” video and Trump’s subsequent “apology.”

Those who took the poll rated their reactions to the clip on a scale from zero (very negative) to ten (positive) and a 74-percent majority had a negative reaction. However, other findings are unsettling but probably not surprising.

As of now, GOP voters largely want the party to stand behind Trump. Nearly three-quarters of Republican voters, 74 percent, surveyed on Saturday said party officials should continue to support Trump. Only 13 percent think the party shouldn’t back him.

Well, Trump knows he solidly captured the GOP base and did so early on. I am thinking back to his remark from back in January: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

The Washington Post broke the story!

NBC News had access to the Trump Access Hollywood tape for four days last week but due to legal  hemming and hawing it was finally scooped by The Washington Post. The Post moved quickly and took just five hours to vet the tape and decide to make it available to the public.

It is worth recalling that months ago a vengeful Trump took away The Washington Post’s campaign press credentials,  banning the newspaper’s staff from his campaign events. In June, Post executive editor Marty Baron wrote this: “Donald Trump’s decision to revoke The Washington Post‘s press credentials is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press,”

Shortly afterward blogger Charlie Pierce wisely noted what this meant for Trump:

“ […] See, in my experience, this is how Marty Baron tells someone that they f*cked with the wrong executive editor.”

Pierce suggested helpfully that it might aid Trump’s understanding of the gravity of what he had done for him to  visit disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law “[…]  at the Basilica of Our Lady Of The Clean Getaway in Rome” [also see the movie Spotlight].