Billy Bush reflects on release of Trump ‘Access Hollywood’ tape two years later
Billy Bush is reflecting on the backlash two years after release of the controversial “Access Hollywood” tape, in which then-reality star Donald Trump brags about groping and kissing women without their consent.
Bush took to Instagram on Sunday to look back on the two years since the video surfaced just one month before the 2016 presidential election.
“Two years ago today, my life went from order to chaos in a dramatic instant,” Bush wrote. “I accounted for my small part, while the President and my employer walked away and still haven’t accounted for their actions. These past couple years have been character building to say the least – anxiety attacks, fits of rage, feelings of betrayal and abandonment – and I have concluded that I am NOT extraordinary. Terrible things can happen at any moment to ANYONE.”
{mosads}The former “Today” show co-host said the positive outcome of the scandal was that he developed more “empathy, humility and resilience” and learned how to “laugh even in the darkest hour.”
He also said he was grateful to God, his family and his supporters.
“I have an idea,” Bush wrote. “Let’s stop tolerating this escalating war on flaws and the obliteration of people for things we all do. … We are humans and thus fallible. Let’s take better care of each other.”
Bush shared a photo of him wearing Spanx on the “Today” set on Oct. 7, 2016, before “chaos struck.”
He wrote that his former co-host Hoda Kotb and the show’s producers had put him in the outfit.
“I remember us all hysterically laughing,” Bush wrote. “I still wear them. Shhh.”
Bush was fired from the morning talk show shortly after the “Access Hollywood” clip was first reported by The Washington Post.
The leaked 2005 video depicts Bush chatting with Trump, who was then a New York business mogul and host of the reality show “The Apprentice.”
The infamous tape reveals Trump bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent, including saying he would “grab them by the p—y.”
He subsequently apologized for his comments, but downplayed his language as “locker room talk” between him and Bush, who was host of the show at the time.
Trump called the legitimacy of the tape into question as recently as last month, suggesting without proof that the recording was “illegal.”
“I had a lawsuit prepared, a lawsuit that was prepared to be filed against NBC because they leaked that tape,” Trump said in an interview with The Daily Caller.
“I had a lawyer hired to bring a suit right after the election ended, but one problem arose,” Trump added. “I won the election.”
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