That Access Hollywood tape is grabbing Trump by the credibility as the E. Jean Carroll rape trial nears its end

• Trump's 'Access Hollywood' tape is in evidence as deliberations begin Tuesday in his civil rape trial.
• The tape is irrelevant to E. Jean Carroll's 'unbelievable' claims, a lawyer for Trump told them.

As jurors begin deliberations Tuesday in the Donald Trump rape and defamation trial in Manhattan, they'll have mixed instructions on how much weight to give his infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in deciding if magazine writer E. Jean Carroll is telling the truth.

The vulgar 2005 tape is Trump's confession, in his own words, of his predatory history with women, Carroll's attorney told jurors in closing arguments Tuesday.

Trump's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, meanwhile, told jurors to just ignore it.

Either way, the Access Hollywood tape — in which he bragged to TV personality Billy Bush about kissing women and grabbing them by the genitals — has been a major factor in the two-week trial.

Carroll testified that Trump attacked her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store almost 30 years ago. She also accuses him of defaming her by denying the alleged attack after she wrote about it in 2019.

The tape, which came out a month before the 2016 election, did not block Trump's path to the White House, despite capturing him boasting of grabbing women. But the Carroll jury may soon decide if the same tape — now plaintiff's exhibit 25 — will impact Trump's return to the White House by helping to brand him a rapist.

Trump himself has defended his remarks as "locker room talk," including in a videotaped trial deposition played for jurors last week.

"Historically, that's true with stars," Trump said of the Access Hollywood tape, when asked about it by Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan.

"If you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true," Trump said in the deposition. "Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately."

In closing arguments Monday, Trump's lawyer mocked the Carroll team's reliance on the tape during the trial.

"They played that Access Hollywood tape how many times?" Tacopina asked.

"Five times?" he said, before agreeing with his client's "locker room talk" assessment.

"He said that," Tacopina conceded of Trump's insistence on the tape that when you're a star, women let you "grab 'em" by the genitals.

"But that doesn't make Ms. Carroll's story any more believable," he said, chopping his hand on the podium in emphasis.

"You can think that Donald Trump is a rude and crude guy," and still find that Carroll is not telling the truth, he added.

But Carroll's attorney Michael J. Ferrara, in his own summations, noted that Trump never actually discredited his words on the tape.

"He said it was locker room talk," Ferrara pointed out, referring to the deposition. "But he didn't say it wasn't true."

Actual locker room talk can be "crude," the lawyer told jurors.

"But that's not what this was. Your common sense and your experience tells you that's not locker room talk," he added. "That video is a confession."