It’s not the word pussy we find offensive, Donald. Trust me.

Let’s go back in time and do a quick inventory of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s ills as we knew them, before the Oct. 7 release of a recording in which he admits he sometimes tries to buy women furniture before sexually assaulting them.

Bizarre obsession with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the point where he invited Russian hackers to crack into U.S. intelligence systems? Check. A murderous heart that saw him advising the Secret Service to stop protecting Hillary Clinton and allow the Second Amendment to run its natural course? Check. Horrible at business, racking up nearly $1 billion in losses while not paying income tax for 20 years? Check. Disdain for military veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and derisive of Gold Star parents? Check. Anti-immigrant wingnut? Check. An obsession with his oldest daughter, describing her anatomy in obscene terms and telling a shock-jock DJ that it’s OK to refer to her as “a piece of ass”? That too.

That Donald Trump has neither the temperament nor the intellect to be the leader of the free world has long been apparent. And that’s what made last Friday’s October surprise all the more, so to speak, gripping.

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock during this election season, that surprise is this. In 2005, TV interviewer Billy Bush did a segment with Trump for the show Access Hollywood. In an unaired “hot mic” moment preserved on audiotape, Trump talks about his attempt to seduce television personality Nancy O’Dell, who was married at the time (as was Trump), by buying her furniture. “I did try and fuck her… I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there,” he tells Bush, who laughs and urges Trump on. A beautiful woman has arrived to escort them to the set of a soap opera on which Trump is making an appearance; he refers to the woman as “it” and suggests he might not be able to control himself around her.

Then he tells Bush about the benefits of being a rich big shot – he doesn’t have to control himself. He may gobble some Tic Tacs and just start kissing her. “And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything… grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

You can grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

The release of the tape (by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who published the story hours after obtaining a leaked copy of the audio) has the GOP fleeing for their lives. The list of Republicans who yanked their support continues to grow, while others (Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, to name a few), have pussied out: They won’t support Trump or campaign with him – but they haven’t pulled their endorsements either.

After the story broke, Trump remained silent for hours, finally issuing a non-apology apology and dismissing the conversation as “locker room banter,” a claim he repeated during the Sunday presidential debate. The odious Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, offered this: “He speaks the way many times people talk around their dining room table.”

Maybe if those people are serial rapists. Pass the gravy, please, and let’s go grab women by the pussy after dessert!

“What kind of fucked up locker rooms has Donald Trump been in?” Dodgers pitcher Brett Anderson wondered on Twitter.

“I haven’t heard that one in any locker rooms,” tweeted Portland Trailblazers guard C.J. McCollum.

Author Kelly Oxford asked women to tweet their first experiences with sexual assault – for 14 hours straight, those tweets came in, more than 50 per minute. Mine was among them.

Despite admitting that he grabs women by the pussy when so moved, which technically and legally means he’s sexually assaulted who knows how many victims, there are still people who will vote for him. That’s how much they hate Hillary Clinton in particular, and women in general.

What say you, Monterey County Republicans? Is Donald Trump still your special creature? Does the candidate still have your support?

On Nov. 8, as the meme goes, pussy fights back. And the fight won’t end there.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin column for the Monterey County Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com.