A firsthand account of the drama that unfolded during Oct. 7-9, 2016, from the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape to the second presidential debate — and everything in between.
NEW YORK — It began as a relatively quiet day in the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were each holed up with their aides on Friday, Oct. 7, 2016, preparing for the second presidential debate, scheduled for Sunday night. Hurricane Matthew, which was churning off the Florida coast, led the Friday-morning newscasts. The Chicago Cubs were beginning a quest for their first World Series title in more than a century. But by midafternoon three separate bombshells, all coming within the span of roughly 90 minutes, threatened to throw the race into chaos.
First, the top intelligence officials of the Obama administration announced their belief that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee earlier in the year. Then the Washington Post published the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Donald Trump bragged about forcing himself on women. And WikiLeaks dumped a trove of emails hacked from the Clinton campaign head John Podesta.
Yahoo News conducted nearly two dozen on-the-record interviews with top officials inside and outside the Clinton and Trump campaigns and the Obama administration, as well as major media figures in Washington, New York and beyond, to produce an exclusive oral history of the wildest 64 hours in modern political history.
The resulting documentary film and online feature present a firsthand account of three pivotal days in the campaign and paint a vivid picture of the behind-the-scenes drama that unfolded inside the Post newsroom, Trump Tower, Clinton campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, Clinton’s Westchester County, N.Y., hotel, and the debate site in St. Louis.
The accounts show how Clinton’s campaign team — staffed by some of the most experienced political operatives in the country — scrambled to stay ahead of the fast-moving events, as news poured in on their phones, computers, tablets and televisions. The wisdom of a key decision — to hold off commenting on the “Access Hollywood” tape for 48 hours — was hotly debated at the time. Meanwhile, the band of relative amateurs assembled by Donald Trump, guided by the candidate’s own implacable, unerring impulse for self-preservation, barreled ahead in the face of denunciations from all sides, including his fellow Republicans. Out of desperation, the campaign came up with the phrase “locker-room banter” to describe Trump’s remarks — and devised the masterstroke of bringing to the debate a gaggle of women who had famously accused Bill Clinton of sexual improprieties in years past.
The dizzying events of that weekend reflect some essential truths about the two candidates and their campaigns: Clinton cool, cautious and cocooned by staff; Trump instinctual, aggressive and unbound by propriety and convention. The same qualities that have so often gotten him in trouble were also the ones that rescued him from this crisis. An embarrassment that might have ended the career of a more conventional candidate somehow morphed into an opportunity for him to show off his resilience — a lesson the nation is still learning about the candidate who emerged triumphant from that one astonishing weekend, one year ago.
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