Billy Bush begins comeback tour with 'Trump said it' op-ed, Stephen Colbert visit
Billy Bush's redemption tour has officially begun, nearly 14 months after the infamous Access Hollywood tape surfaced and cost him his job at NBC News.
On Sunday, The New York Times published an op-ed by the former host in which he said no one should doubt that President Trump in 2005 made lewd comments about grabbing women’s genitalia. Over the weekend, Bush also booked his first late-night appearance since the scandal: He's set to appear on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Monday.
“He said it,” Bush wrote in his NYT op-ed. "Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass stand-up act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real. We now know better."
Bush, along with Trump, was caught on a hot microphone joking about sexual assault during the taping of an Access Hollywood segment. A videotape of the remarks, released by The Washington Post a month before Election Day 2016, prompted 16 women to come forward and accuse Trump of sexually inappropriate behavior and assault.
The revelations threatened to derail Trump’s presidential campaign.
At the time, the candidate apologized for the remarks, calling them “locker room talk.” But since then he has privately suggested that the footage is not authentic, The Times reported last week. Shortly before Trump's inauguration in January, it reported, Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the tape, saying, “We don’t think that was my voice.”
More recently, he has repeated the claim.
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In his op-ed, Bush, who lost his Today show job in the wake of the Access Hollywood revelations, said the remarks were authentic. He noted that “seven other guys” heard them and that “every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real.”
Trump’s recent doubts about the recording’s authenticity, Bush said, have “hit a raw nerve in me.”
“I can only imagine how it has reopened the wounds of the women who came forward with their stories about him and did not receive enough attention,” he wrote. “This country is currently trying to reconcile itself to years of power abuse and sexual misconduct. Its leader is wantonly poking the bear.”
Follow Greg Toppo on Twitter: @gtoppo