Donald Trump and his “Brain Trust” have been sequestered in Trump Tower Since Friday night, doing damage control and strategizing on how to approach Sunday’s Town Hall Debate with Hillary Clinton in light of another dismal week capped off by the release of the devastating Access Hollywood audio tape of Trump bragging about his entitlement to sexually assault women.  The Los Angeles Star has obtained a draft of the candidate’s opening statement, in which he tries to put those comments, and the rest of his controversies in perspective.

“This has been a difficult and challenging couple of weeks for me.  Surprisingly, the fact that I likely paid no U.S. federal income taxes for almost the past 20 years, has not been greeted as the sign of financial genius on my part that it should have been, but has been overshadowed unfairly by the mainstream media as a sign that I am a pathetically inept business man who lost almost a billion dollars during the go go 90’s, at a time when other casino companies were making money hand over fist.  Once again, the media has missed the point and abused its power by trying to denigrate me.

“But my supporters know better.  They realize that this has been a brilliant strategy on my part, executed to perfection, to avoid paying taxes for almost two decades. No one but me has ever heard of the loss carry forward provision in the tax code, and therefore no one but me knows how to fix it. Pay no attention to the musings of my accountant that he is the one who prepared my taxes and that I had nothing to do with employing this strategy.  Who do you want to be president, my accountant or me??!!

“As for charges that I have called half of Americans lazy who pay no taxes and just drift along on the hard work of others, that is not applicable to me at all.  I only paid taxes because I lost massive amounts of money.  It took real skill to do that.  Nobody else was losing money in that period — especially in the casino industry.  I will use the same business acumen to take on our federal budget problems, trade deficit, and national debt.  I just need to check and see how I can use the tax code to cover federal losses, and we’ll be on our way to recovery.

“Clintonites have called me “racist, xenophobic, and misogynist,” and I am grateful — mainly because my supporters do not know what those last two words mean.  This sort of labeling is exactly what is wrong with America today.  It is a striking example of elitist Ivy League attitudes and vocabulary that is out of touch with the common man, with whom I am in perfect synch.  Penn is the only good Ivy League School, and Wharton is the best business school, and I am very intelligent, by the way, very, very intelligent.  If I were the Clinton folks, I would be more straight-forward and call me “racist, sexist, and ultra-nationalist or anti-immigrant.”  But what do they know?

“And Hillary has been very mean to me.  Very, very mean.  I am not sure why she is so angry.  She must be unsatisfied in her sex life.  I am not.  I have a very, very satisfactory sex life, I guarantee you that, and that’s why you don’t see me engaging in the type of nasty, vicious name-calling that she has done.  My surrogates, Maryanne and Scottie (the transgender spokespersons — see how enlightened I am!), say I have not run a nasty campaign, and my robust sex life is the reason why.

“And that brings me to the topic that is on all of your minds, the Access Hollywood tape.  At least you can’t say that I “beat around the Bush,” right?  I mean, I just reached out and grabbed it, as I am entitled to do.  But people seem to want an explanation.  Fine.  First, this was simply locker room talk, notwithstanding the fact that it was not in a locker room, with a team, or even with a group of guys.  I was just talking with one guy, Billy Bush, who led me down this terrible path, by laughing and agreeing with what I said.  I did not initiate the conversation except for the words.  And once again, the media is unfairly using my own words against me as if they reflect what I really mean.

“The truth is, I do regret this episode, but it goes deeper than that.  I regret burying Jeb Bush so much in the primaries.  I never expected that his family would ultimately do me in after I criticized them and called Jeb ‘low energy.’  I can almost hear him now, saying:

‘You see, Donald, it is important to listen instead of talking over everyone all the time.  If I didn’t listen, I wouldn’t have remembered that Cousin Billy had told us at Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago about some crude comments you’d made about women.’

I bet he wishes he’d remembered earlier, in time to help himself in the primaries.  But I gotta give old Jeb credit, he ultimately got his revenge by telling Billy to have someone go through those Access Hollywood archives to find that audio tape.

However, the important thing is not what I said or did 11 years ago, but what Bill Clinton did 15-20 years ago.  The man is not fit to be President — but he was.  And if he was President, then you have to elect me, too.  That’s simple logic, “If A, then B.”  So I demand your vote!

“If I am not elected, it is discrimination, and I would have solid grounds to sue, which I am seriously considering, by the way.  I am having my team of lawyers looking into that right now, let by Michael “What Videotape?” Cohen.  In any event, I was a much younger man then, very impressionable and eager to impress, and we all did stupid things when we were young, right?  I mean, I was only 59 years old.  I was still finding my way in the world.  You can’t hold that against me.  (That reminds me of the old joke about the man who sees a woman with yuge knockers and asks her if he complimented bosom, would she hold it against him — but I digress.)

“I would like to clear up one important thing from the tape, something that does not reflect my true views.  It may appear from the tape that I do not approve of, much less appreciate, women whose figures have been artificially enhanced by boob jobs, and it is very important to clear that up.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I love big boobs, whether they are real or fake.  Just ask Melania.  She even calls me a big boob sometimes.

“I realize that the release of this old tape has distracted from the main issues of the campaign — whether we can just throw away the Constitution and impose a sort of martial law against Muslim citizens, whether we can rip 16 million Mexican immigrants from their families and deport them, and whether we can conduct foreign policy based on a schoolyard bully’s response to real and perceived slights.

All of this has caused me to rethink my overall campaign strategy, and I realize I need an October Surprise to spring on Clinton.  I’ve got my people working on that.  You’ve got my word that I am diligently pursuing that.  And I’ve got the best people — the Russians, Julian Assange, and others.  (Speaking of Assange, don’t you hate it when a publicity hound promises a big, blockbuster announcement and then just uses the press event as simply a way to promote his own business interests?  DISGRACEFUL!!!).

“But I am appealing to all Americans, young/old, black/white, even Mexican/Muslim, to come together and dig up some dirt on Hillary that I can use to elect me.  People said I could not unify our country, but giving everyone a common goal is the way to do it!  A vote for me is a vote for America!!  And don’t forget to pick up a ‘Make America Rape Again’ — I mean ‘Great Again’ — hat on your way out!”