Did the Access Hollywood tape actually help Trump?

[President Johnson]

I know it's sounds literally insane. However, in the new book I alone can fix it, Bill Barr reportedly told Trump he only won 2016 because of it and that he expected him to lose reelection in 2020. While conventional wisdom doesn't back this up and the polls were flawed anyway, it's still an interesting point. Maybe some voters appreciated this under the notion of "he just says what he thinks and is authentic".

Thoughts?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Nah I think it would have cost him the election if not for The Comey letter . I think both events basically cancelled each other out and you got the result that would have happened if neither of them were released . I think the fundamentals just favored the GOP in 2016 and Hillary was a worse candidate then people thought and Trump was better which meant the GOP was gonna win that year in most cases.


I think in a scenario where Access Hollywood doesn’t come out but Comey does , Trump wins the popular vote and also wins MN , NH , NV , ME and potentially CO as well


In a scenario where Access Hollywood does come out but Comey doesn’t I think Hillary wins by winning WI , MI , PA in additional to all the states she won .

[TML]

What helped him was his response to it - i.e. he turned the narrative away from this topic by bringing some of Bill Clinton's accusers to the second debate. Had the narrative stayed on this topic, Trump might not have won.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Didn't we have this thread before? I still say no. What helped him was timing. Had the tape been released less than two weeks before the election, he may very well have lost. It was released too early and Trump was able to do and say crazier things that took it out of the media headlines and muddy the waters enough in the time he had between then and election day 2016.

[AtorBoltox]

What helped him was his response to it - i.e. he turned the narrative away from this topic by bringing some of Bill Clinton's accusers to the second debate. Had the narrative stayed on this topic, Trump might not have won.

The absolutely catastrophic aspect of this was not so much that Trump went there but Hillary's absolutely pathetic response. When someone accuses your husband of being a rapist, just trotting out 'when they go low, we go high' is an admission of having no defense

[CascadianIndy]

The extent to which AH "helped" him was that it was the final major skeleton in his closet during the campaign season, and it got dropped on the electorate too early so that by the time the Comey Letter came out, memories had already begun to fade.