WASHINGTON D.C. — After being secretly recorded praising China’s President Xi Jinping for ending term limits, President Trump dismissed his autocratic comments as just “regular locker room authoritarianism”.

“He’s now president for life. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump mused to journalists at this year’s closed-door Gridiron Club dinner. “Because when you’re a star, democracies let you do anything. You can even grab them by the pussy.”

“And by ‘pussy’, I of course mean ‘the democratic rule of law’,” the president explained.

Trump insisted he never said anything at all about being president for life, or Xi Jinping. Upon being presented with audio of him saying exactly those things, he then rebuffed the recorded comments as “merely locker room talk, you know, ordinary alpha male tyranny chatter.”

He then apologized, “if (his) remarks about violating the Constitution offended anyone.”

White House spokesperson and re-animated husk Kellyanne Conway took to the Sunday morning political shows to walk back the president’s borderline-fascist comments. On ABC’s Meet The Press, Conway insisted Trump was just “playfully exaggerating to his buddies” about following through on his well-documented strongman impulses.

“Everyone knows that when a bunch of men get together in a locker room, the first thing they start doing is brag about who could suspend democratic elections in a totalitarian power grab,” Conway asserted.

As the White House attempted to move past the comments, more audio from the private dinner emerged. “I moved on America like a bitch,” the president can be heard saying. “I did try and fuck her out of elections. But she was married to having her citizens actually vote for their president.”

At press time White House officials stated they were “just gonna take a pass” on the president-for-life scandal, and wait for the next one to take over.