Donald Trump has been battling intense backlash over admissions he made during a hot-mic faux pas in 2005, when he told television host Billy Bush that he had kissed and groped women without their consent.

The Republican presidential candidate dismissed the recorded conversation as “locker-room talk.”

“You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper told Trump on Sunday night during the second presidential debate. “That is sexual assault.”

Cooper added: “You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”

“No, I didn’t say that at all,” Trump replied. “I don’t think you understood what was said. This was locker-room talk. I’m not proud of it. I apologized to my family, I apologized to the American people.”

Cooper asked him three times whether he had done the things he alleged in 2005.

“No, I have not,” Trump ultimately answered.

Several women have since come out with claims that Trump forcibly groped or kissed them.

Rush Limbaugh addressed what he called the “Donald Trump sex-talk scandal” on his radio show Wednesday, mocking liberals and how, he said, they view the concept of consent.

“You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing,” the conservative commentator said, according to audio released by Media Matters for America. “You can do anything – the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything – as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent.

“If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation, then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.”

According to the Justice Department, “sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.”

In 2014, Limbaugh expressed frustration about the definition of consent.

“How many of you guys, in your own experience with women, have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?” he said on his radio show, according to the Huffington Post. In modern times, Limbaugh said, “that is simply, that’s not tolerated. People aren’t even going to try to understand that one. I mean, it used to be used as a cliche. It used to be part of the advice young boys were given.

“See, that’s what we’ve got to change. We have got to reprogram the way we raise young men. … Are these not lawsuits just waiting to happen?”

Trump was swept up in a wave of criticism late last week after The Washington Post reported on a 2005 video in which he can be heard making lewd statements to Bush about how he forcibly kissed and groped women.

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them,” Trump told Bush, who was with “Access Hollywood” at the time. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

“And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” said another voice, apparently Bush’s. “Grab them by the p—y,” Trump added. “You can do anything.”

Days later, New Zealand’s TV3 released a video interview from 1993 in which Trump acknowledged his public image as a wealthy businessman who was often surrounded by glamorous women.

“No, I don’t enjoy that image,” he said at the time. “I guess I have that image. I think women are beautiful; I think certain women are more beautiful than others, to be perfectly honest.

“And it’s fortunate I don’t have to run for political office. But I do have a level of popularity. And, frankly, it’s not the image I want – the image I want is that I’m doing great in business.”

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