Anderson Cooper grills Donald Trump: 'You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women'

The second presidential debate kicked off with a series of intense questions over Donald Trump's recently unearthed comments talking about kissing and groping women, which Trump defended as "locker room talk."

Moderator Anderson Cooper asked Trump, "You called what you said locker room banter, kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women."

When asked if he ever assaulted a woman as described in the recently leaked tape Trump replied, "No, I have not. I will tell you, that I'm going the make our country safe. We're going to have borders in our country, which we don't know."

See photos from the tense debate:

"I don't think you understand," the GOP nominee responded to Cooper. "This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologized to my family. To the American people."

Hillary Clinton rebutted that while Trump says "the video doesn't represent who he is, but I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is."

"We've seen him insult women. We've seen him rate women on their appearance, so yes, this is who Donald Trump is", Clinton continued.

Trump then pivoted to talking about his plans to defeat ISIS saying, "But this is locker room talk. When we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have frankly drowning people in steel cages, wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, so many bad things happening. We haven't seen anything like this. The carnage all over the world."

When Cooper continued to press the billionaire businessman on the issue of his treatment of women he replied, "I have great respect for women," Trump continued, "Nobody has more respect for women than I do."

Trump also used the opportunity to discuss allegations of assault that have been made by various women against Bill Clinton.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," he said to Hillary Clinton as he accused her of enabling her husband's alleged sexual abuse of women.

BY: WILLIAM STEAKIN

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