Former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, famously known for laughing along with Donald Trump in the infamous 2005 tape on which he bragged about how he sexually assaults women, is revealing new details about how that tape—which was later publicized by the Washington Post ahead of the 2016 presidential election—originally got buried in the first place.
“Had that tape leaked out in 2005 when it happened, heads would have rolled, including mine, because you just completely tarnished our major cash cow,” Bush told Tucker Carlson in a new podcast episode.
Trump was talking to Bush just before filming an Access Hollywood segment about the then The Apprentice host’s cameo on Days of Our Lives in 2005, apparently not realizing he was being recorded as he described his attempt to seduce a married woman “like a b---h.” He also talked about her “big phony tits” and made the well-known “grab ‘em by the p---y” comment as he admits that he “did try and f--- her,” while Bush laughs along.
Bush told Carlson that he brought up Trump’s comments with his bosses soon after it happened and even suggested something be “done” with the tape to protect one of the network’s biggest assets. “The reason I said that was—nothing that I did, nothing that I was ashamed of, I don’t care,” he said. “The reason was, in 2005, Donald Trump was the biggest star on NBC making a hundred million dollars in profit a year for the network.”
Access Hollywood was being produced by NBC Studios at that time and was syndicated across NBC affiliates that also aired The Apprentice.
The fallout for Bush after the tape was released was swift. He told Variety, “I was obliterated,” fired from the show days later and out of a mainstream job for three years before landing a similar gig at Extra. His boss, Access Hollywood executive producer Rob Silverstein, also lost his job following Bush’s exit. Trump, on the other hand, became president.
Bush is now starting his own video podcast called Hot Mics—“the mics are still hot, except for, we know they are,” he explained—to escape being “silenced” following the tape’s release in 2016. Megyn Kelly is scheduled to his first guest when it premieres next Monday.
