The White House said that remarks from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump about groping women in a leaked recording from 11 years ago amounted to sexual assault.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that US President Barack Obama found the comments repugnant.
Mr Trump had stepped up his attacks against US House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier in the day, calling him a "weak and ineffective leader" and saying Mr Ryan and other Republicans were hurting his bid for the White House by holding back their support.
The day after Mr Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, told party lawmakers he was breaking with the presidential nominee and would not campaign for him, Mr Trump issued a barrage of social media posts criticising Republicans who have abandoned his campaign.
The stinging attacks deepened the party's dramatic rift over the former reality TV star, who has seen a string of Republican defections after the leaked video surfaced.
"Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty," Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday.
Mr Ryan told congressional Republicans he would put his energy into preserving Republican majorities in Congress, all but conceding that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would likely win the White House in the 8 November election.
The move angered some Trump supporters, although Mr Ryan said he would not withdraw his endorsement of the New York businessman.
Mr Trump has also threatened to expand on his attacks against Mrs Clinton and her husband if more damning recordings of the Republican presidential nominee are released.
"If they want to release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we'll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things. There are so many of them, folks," Mr Trump told a rally in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
Mr Trump came out swinging on the campaign trail yesterday, calling on voters to hold Mrs Clinton accountable as an enabler of her husband's alleged abuses.
"For decades Hillary Clinton has been deeply familiar with her husband's predatory behaviour, and instead of trying to stop it, she made it possible for him to take advantage of even more women," he said.
"She put even more women in harm's way and then she goes out and says 'Oh I love women, I'm going to help women.' She's a total hypocrite."
Mr Trump lashed out at his rival about her husband during Sunday night's debate, saying actions by the couple in decades past were far worse than his "locker room talk."
He threw down the gauntlet by hosting a press event minutes before the debate, with three women who in the past accused Mr Clinton of sexual assault.
Mr Trump then invited the women, including Juanita Broaddrick who has accused Mr Clinton of raping her in 1978, to attend the debate, where the former president was also in attendance.
"Last night I decided we would expose the hypocrisy of the Clintons and the media, and our politicians, to the entire world," he said.
"Bill Clinton was the worst abuser of women ever to sit in the Oval Office. He was a predator."
At one point the Mr Trump crowd broke into extended chants of "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
During the debate, Mrs Clinton declined to wade into Mr Trump's mentions of her husband.
