Billy Bush Felt Shame After Trump Tape, Checked Into A 'Soul-Searching' Facility
Billy Bush has had enough of Donald Trump's alleged lies regarding his explosive sexual assault tape. The Access Hollywood host blasted the president in a tell-all interview with Stephen Colbert, saying: "Last week, Trump for some reason came out with, 'That's not my voice on the tape.' Like I said, you can't say that. That is your voice, I was there, you were there, that's your voice on the tape.'"
As RadarOnline.com readers know, the president was widely criticized after an audio recording leaked of him bragging to Bush about his conquests during a backstage conversation: "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p***y. You can do anything."
While Trump, 71, first apologized for his words, calling them just casual "locker room talk,' he recently changed his answer, saying it was not him speaking on the tape after all!
"When he said this," said Bush, 46, "it infuriated me on the personal front and then I ended up Googling and I read an article with all of these women's accounts, because when that article first came out, it was 13 days after I had been fired, so I was in my own personal shock, fight or flight. And so I never really read it all the way. And as I read these, I said, 'Twenty women don't get together and say, 'Hey, do you know what would be really fun? Let's take down a powerful guy together. Haha!' No, they don't.'"
Telling Colbert of his decision to write the explosive New York Times article, Bush added: "And I said, 'Okay, you're reopening wounds on them too. Enough's enough. Stop playing around with people's lives!' That upset me. So I wrote the NYT op-ed."
Bush said that when he first heard the tape, he felt a sense of shame just of having been involved in such a conversation.
"The first time I ever heard it was three days before it leaked. It was a gut punch, it's a gut punch now. It will always be," Bush said. "At the time, it was 2005, and his ratings were through the roof and he was the big star of NBC. And I sort of equated what he was saying to some kind of crass stand-up act, like an Andrew Dice Clay performance. You kind of figure, 'Well that's not Dice when he's home. He actually doesn't do those things.'"
He added that at the time he simply saw Trump's comments as distasteful and crass, not as a true threat to women.
"If I had thought there was a man detailing a sexual assault strategy to me, I would've called the FBI, not just reported it to my executive producer," he said. "That was it for me. … Everybody sort of had to kiss the ring of the Donald because he was making so much money for NBC."
After the scandal, Bush was so overwhelmed by his abrupt NBC firing and drama with Trump that he went on a "soul-searching retreat" to work on himself and "better" his life. He said that while working in a far-away cabin, he turned to a nearby TV and saw Trump accepting the presidency.
"I passed the television in the office when I was checking in and he's got the hand up and I'm going into my little cabin to do the work. Tough. Irony," Bush recalled.
Donald Trump has denied all accusations of sexual assault, and has yet to speak out on Billy Bush's shocking claims.
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