The tape represents yet another remarkable moment in a campaign full of them. Politicians, like all people, lead different lives in public and in private, and say things behind closed doors that they would never say publicly. While plenty of former presidents have had a penchant for lewd remarks—witness the hilarious recording of Lyndon Johnson ordering trousers—and plenty have been womanizers, including Johnson and President Bill Clinton, never has a recording of a presidential candidate speaking this way made its way into public while he was running.

Responding to the story, Trump tried to play the remarks off as simply boys-will-be-boys behavior, and—continuing a recent pattern of making unsubstantiated allegations—claimed that Bill Clinton “has said far worse to me on the golf course.” Trump continued: “I apologize if anyone was offended.” That non-apology falls short on several counts. Trump seems to view these statements simply offensively rude.

The Clinton campaign, in a statement, said, “This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to be president.”

The recording, made as Trump was on microphone, offers an unusual window into his private conversation. There’s a powerful impact to hearing Trump make the comments himself, as one can in the new tape, though it matches with previous stories. “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass,” he said. He famously conducted an affair with Marla Maples, who would become his second wife, while still married to his first wife. Jill Harth, who worked with Trump on a pageant in the 1990s, accused him of attempted rape and told The Guardian this summer that Trump had groped her.

After the Post published its story, The New York Times published online a column by Nicholas Kristof that will be printed in Sunday’s edition, adding to Harth’s story. Harth described her encounters with Trump in harrowing detail. In one case, she says he attempted to have sex with her while she was looking at his daughter Ivanka’s bedroom.

“I was admiring the decoration, and next thing I know he’s pushing me against a wall and has his hands all over me,” Harth told Kristof. “He was trying to kiss me. I was freaking out.” In one case, she vomited “as a defense mechanism.”

In an interview this week, Trump argued that some of the comments he has made about women—often delivered during appearances on Howard Stern’s radio show—were not sincere, but were in fact made in character, under his guise as an entertainer.

“A lot of that was done for the purpose of entertainment, there’s nobody that has more respect for women than I do,” he said. Asked whether he was trying to tone that down now, he said, “It’s not a question of trying, it’s very easy.”

These private comments contradict Trump’s idea that it’s all just public posturing.