Former Today host Billy Bush has broken his silence seven months after the now-infamous Donald Trump “Access Hollywood tape” cost him his job, explaining in a tell-all interview that watching the tape left him “totally and completely gutted” but that he had ultimately become a “better man” as a result.
In a lengthy interview with the Hollywood Reporter, the 45-year-old reporter and TV personality addressed the impact of the 2005 recording — in which Bush and Trump can be heard making disparaging comments about women — on his own career and on his family life.
“Looking back on what was said on that bus, I wish I had changed the topic. I wish I had said: ‘Does anyone want water?’ or ‘It looks like it’s gonna rain,'” Bush told the outlet. “He liked TV and competition. I could’ve said, ‘Can you believe the ratings on whatever?’ I didn’t have the strength of character to do it.”
In 2005, Trump was in the second season of his hit reality television show The Apprentice and was one of the biggest stars in the industry. Bush told THR he was in frequent contact with Trump as part of his assignment at Access Hollywood, because he knew the brash real estate developer would always be good for a quote; still, he said he’d never heard anything from Trump like he’d heard that day on a bus, when Trump discussed his ability to do “anything” with women due to his star stature.
“I don’t recall anything to that degree. But he’s a provocateur. Shocking statements flow like wine from him. And he likes to captivate an audience,” Bush said when asked whether he’d heard Trump speak that way in the past.
“I felt that, in that moment, he was being typically Donald, which is performing and shocking,” he added. “Almost like Andrew Dice Clay, the stand-up comedian: Does he really do the things that he’s saying or is that his act? And in Donald’s case, I equated it that way. When he said what he said, I’d like to think if I had thought for a minute that there was a grown man detailing his sexual assault strategy to me, I’d have called the FBI.”
The leak of the tape to the Washington Post in October 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, almost derailed Trump’s candidacy and cost Bush his job. Shortly after the tape was made public, Bush was suspended and then fired from his job at NBC’s Today, where he had been a host for just one year.
Bush told THR he had planned to apologize on-air the Monday after the tape hit, but he never got the opportunity.
“I would have said, ‘I am deeply embarrassed,'” he said. “‘I sit before you every morning, and I have on a different show [Access Hollywood Live] many mornings, and I hope you know the person you’re looking at and have developed an opinion about is [the real me]. You aren’t wrong about that. I am ashamed. Going forward, you can be sure that I will not participate in anything like that. And I will keep my eyes out and do what I can to stop it from happening.'”
Bush said he turned to therapy and physical fitness, including sessions with renowned life coach Tony Robbins, to help come to terms with the episode. He told THR that he is planning a return to television at some point soon, to conduct “deeper, more pivotal interviews” with public figures, though details about the project remained scarce.
Bush added that he would find it fascinating to discuss moving on after a traumatic experience on his new television project.
“Someday I might address groups and other people about it,” he said. “Important to it all is owning and accepting your part of it. And I completely have owned and accepted my part in all of this. But I’m not a victim. There are people who are going through things far worse than me.”
Read Bush’s full interview with the Hollywood Reporter here.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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