Is Billy Bush on Access Hollywood Again
WHEN BILLY Bush greets me at the ferry, he's dressed like the American dream. Red, white, and blue, from his cap and his shorts to his flip-flops and wrist sweatband. Bush puts on a white mask for a tour around Maine'south North Haven Island simply when he sees that I'chiliad wearing ane, but assures me I don't need it. He's been on the isle three weeks, he says. He's safe. The logic doesn't quite work—I take not been quarantining in a Maine idyll for about a calendar month—just Bush insists I needn't wear a mask on his behalf, implying a Bush-conferred immunity as a pandemic ravages the world.
Bush'due south security makes sense; after all, he tells me, earlier the worst thing that always happened to him happened to him, "nothing bad ever happened to me." He invited me hither to see the family home where nothing bad ever happened. But he knows we're going to talk about the tape—if you've heard of Billy Bush, you know which one—and its inevitable reprise as the 2020 election looms. When I tell him he's either very unself-aware or has nothing to hide, Bush perhaps affirms both: "I've got zilch to hide," he says.
Indeed, Bush couldn't be more than open as he introduces me to relatives and takes me effectually boondocks, showing off the island's main street (Main Street), the road with the tennis court on information technology (Tennis Court Road), the road with a golf course on it (Golf Grade Route), and the cove with three homes endemic by members of the Bush family. Bush-league, who ever seems to exist mid-snack, speaks in an off-duty announcer's voice, a patrician take on Regis Philbin's staccato. He greets nearly everyone past start and terminal name, from Marty Molloy the lobsterman to members of his ain family. His erstwhile married woman is staying in the family unit cabin with two of their 3 daughters while Bush looks afterward his female parent and father in the primary business firm, where Jonathan Bush Sr. is recovering from a broken hip. His ex is introduced as "Sydney Bush-league" when she drops off a cheese plate.
Bush'south continued guilelessness is surprising given the video the globe watched four years ago, i calendar month earlier the 2016 presidential election. At the get-go of the and then-xi-year-old hot-mic footage leaked to The Washington Mail, Donald Trump is off-photographic camera on a bus, preparing for an advent on NBC'due south amusement-news program Access Hollywood past delivering a profane stream-of-consciousness monologue detailing several unwanted sexual advances. The future president and then-Apprentice star'south horny diatribe is punctuated by the Beavisesque snickers of Bush, Admission Hollywood correspondent and, in this video, Trump hype human being. Bush is the sidekick in the moment that will somewhen derail his own life. Or, as Billy Bush describes his 33-year-old self, he's a "little suck-up cog" and "little suck-upward Billy Bush" and "the fluffer."
Trump's muttering, "Grab them past the pussy" is the well-nigh famous part of the tape. Merely the about heartbreaking moment is when Bush and Trump exit the bus and are greeted by the woman Trump had just been fantasizing about grabbing. The actress shakes Trump'southward hand and Bush says, "How about a piddling hug for the Donald?" The actress leans in, the punchline to a joke she hasn't heard and that'south been fabricated at her expense.
Bush was publicly fired, shamed, and contrite. In the middle of all of this (but not considering of it, Bush-league says), he and his wife got divorced. In 2019, afterward years of media exile, Bush-league returned to his vocation, every bit host of the broadcast entertainment-news program Actress. Today, he presents himself as a human being willing to cocky-assess as honestly as he can. "I'grand afraid if you rolled back many moments that I thought were individual, you could do a highlight reel that would last x hours," Bush says, popping a piece of cheese into his mouth. "I mean, I've many times non been my best self." He admits that if he were his 33-year-old self on that jitney with Trump again, even knowing what he knows now, he doesn't believe he could have washed anything other than but non express joy, or directly the conversation away from women and onto one of Trump's other interests: golf, New York sports. "I'yard not going to requite [you] a pandering reply," Bush says. "I'm sorry. I tin can't."
What's tricky is that the things that led to the demise of Bush'due south career and emotional well-being are the same ones that led to his ascent. "I'yard a actually difficult worker," Bush says. "Creative. Fun . . . Affable." Hosting is an amoral art of being in the moment, of non letting anything derail the proceedings. On the record, Bush'due south task was to prepare Trump to exist Trumpy in what amounted to an advertizement for another NBC show.
Bush-league claims, "I've moved on completely." Merely he also keeps docking the chat on the subject field of Trump, NBC, and what happened in his mid-40s when the tape came out. "How could you accept this little slice of shit and pigment me with it?" he asks, features contorting in hurting and disbelief. Yes, he heard Trump say all of those things on that jitney and didn't stop him. But the man who said them got elected president, by us. And dissimilar other men who were exposed in the #MeToo reckoning following Trump'due south election, Bush insists he has put in the piece of work to try and be better. "I saw information technology, and I did not like what I saw," Bush says of the tape today. Four years after the lowest moment in his life, he wants you to know he's not little suck-up Baton Bush-league anymore, but a sympathetic announcer unafraid to stand up for himself.
"I've been done," Bush says of why he'southward finally talking and then much virtually this now. "I'one thousand not going to be washed once again." But and then Bush'southward confidence limpens. He looks across the table for assurance. "I hope I accept some sort of amnesty. Do I get amnesty?"
WHEN THE now-49-year-old Billy Bush-league was a kid, he bicycled with such abandon that he sustained multiple concussions. His mother, Jody, procured a motorcycle helmet to protect her son when he could non stop and protect himself. Bush says he has ADHD, to which he attributes his evident tendency to impulsively throw himself into things. Later the tape, it was yoga and self-help. Now it'south Peloton and golf and tennis and evening swims across the cove with his niece, whom he calls "Anna Bush."
Bush's begetter, the brother of President George H. W. Bush-league, was what Bush calls "a little emotionally unavailable" when he was growing up. "He'south that old stoic," Bush says of Jonathan Bush Sr. "It was not a, put his arm around you and say, 'I love you, son.' That's never going to happen. Merely we know that he did." Bush became a pleaser: "Like me, similar me, similar me," he says his old internal monologue went. "Always tell a joke to get out of a weird moment . . . keep the ball in the air, keep everybody happy. We're having fun. Nosotros're making laughs. We're making silly things."
Bush was a star lacrosse player and C pupil at Colby College in Maine. When he graduated, he got his showtime task in dissemination, at a radio station near Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. The director of Oldies 105, Bob Adams, didn't particularly need another DJ, so he likewise conscripted Bush into selling ads to local businesses. Bush-league learned that the best manner to make the auction was to convince owners to record the ads themselves: "Letting them hear themselves," as Bush describes information technology. "That spoke to their ego."
One car dealership was advertising with half-dozen other radio stations in the region. Every calendar week, Adams would send Bush there to talk to the sales manager in accuse of radio buys, and every calendar week the man would transport him abroad with nothing. Sometimes on the nearly hr-long drive home later his weekly failure, Bush would pull over to the side of the road and cry.
At the urging of Adams, Bush finally asked why the director bought ads from every station but his. "If y'all had a prissy set of legs and some boobs, that would be a start," he remembers the human being saying. Instead of bristling at the rough remark, that'southward exactly what Bush went and did: A few days later, the ultimate squad actor returned in full drag—a miniskirt and sock-stuffed peak. "Hello," said Bush, approximating a Swedish accent. "Billy never told me how cute you are. I was wondering if you'd like to advertise on our radio station?" The manager, obviously delighted by Bush-league'southward brazenness, signed the contract. Equally a result, Bush'southward salary doubled, which allowed him to rent a house on the lake, every bit well as buy a boat that would afterwards sink. After New Hampshire came v years at a Top forty station in Washington, D. C., then local Telly. In 2002, he Baton-Bushed his mode onto Access Hollywood, where he showed a chaotic instinct for humanizing people. Rob Silverstein, who ran the series for 20 years, says, "He's ever looking to 'What tin I do that no one else is gonna do? How do I make it interesting?' And he has that charm."
The charm was deployed by Bush in booking glory talent and establishing a rapport with interview subjects that would hopefully translate to televised magic. A former Today-prove staffer recalls the dissociation information technology takes to chat backstage with ratings-attracting creeps. "Yous almost take to not be offended by what comes out of people's mouths," he says. Bush'southward former field producer Mat Baxt explains that the goal of Access Hollywood and all other entertainment-news programs is "to get the biggest star you can possibly go for your show and put them in the best possible light."
Bush was good at this. And then he became the primary interviewer of Donald Trump, and so the biggest star on the network. "He loved me," Bush says. "Loved me. I think I was a good foil." And Bush was—the low-key, lower-status analogue to Trump'south bloviating bravado. Trump'due south crudeness was widely known and tolerated at NBCUniversal and its parent company, General Electric, from the fluffing bus to the C suite. When the tape was recorded in 2005, GE was run by CEO and chairman Jeff Immelt. Bush'southward brother, Jonathan, who later worked with Immelt at a health-care company, says Immelt told him that Trump would demand to see with Immelt on a regular basis, and frequently used inappropriate language. (Immelt did not agree to exist interviewed for this story, but some other person familiar with these meetings confirms that characterization, though he says Immelt "thought [the] record was awful and Billy deserved to be fired.")
It's like shooting fish in a barrel to run across how this all added up to The Moment, when Trump says The Line. (Bush has always maintained he was looking out the window at the cameraman for the cue to get off the jitney and never heard it until a few days earlier the record leaked.) There have no uncertainty been countless moments in Donald Trump's life like the one on the leaked record, tacit affirmations pushing him along his path to the Oval Role. And on the other side of the transaction was Bush-league, who orchestrated endless moments like the ones he had with Trump, exploiting celebrities for amusement until he reached the pinnacle of professional affability: a full-fourth dimension chore on NBC's Today show.
FOR xi YEARS the tape was forgotten, buried in a special drawer at Access Hollywood reserved for life-ruining pieces of footage. Bush was aware of its existence but had never heard or seen it. Trump became the Republican nominee for president right before Bush started hosting the 9:00 a.one thousand. hr of Today, when the tone shifts from news to late-forenoon vino conversation.
Bush-league says he would bring upward the 2005 off-camera conversation with Trump to his coworkers. "Did y'all hear what this guy said well-nigh Mexicans?" he might say. "Well, one time I was on a bus with him and he said the most icky things." In these retellings, Bush did not mention his office in the interaction.
Executives at NBC News seemed pleased with Bush's on-air performance, and while at the 2016 Rio Olympics for one of his first large assignments, he got a scoop interviewing swimmer Ryan "Jeah" Lochte about getting mugged, which was almost immediately revealed as a fiction meant to cover upwardly Lochte'due south bad behavior. When the Today squad returned to New York, a senior NBC News staffer says Matt Lauer confronted Bush-league about tabloid gossip that Lauer was threatened by Bush. Bush's brother, Jonathan, remembers Billy repeating Lauer'southward words at the fourth dimension: "The rumors about you and I and competition will stop immediately. Do you hear me?" (The NBC staffer confirms that chestnut; Bush can't comment. Withal, another person with noesis of the chat disputes that Lauer ever felt threatened, because Bush had shown limited ability to encompass serious news.)
And so a producer remembered the tape that was sitting in the drawer of terrible tapes. Early in the calendar week of October 2, Silverstein, who was still running Admission Hollywood in NBC's entertainment division, says he dug information technology out, had someone splice the disintegrating footage, and sent information technology to NBC'southward general counsel to see if he could legally air it without everyone involved giving consent. Bush recalls watching the tape for the beginning fourth dimension in the office of Today's and then–senior producer, Noah Oppenheim, who at present runs NBC News. He sat at Oppenheim'southward desk, listening to himself laugh, while Oppenheim stood, watching Bush-league watch himself. Though it was worse than Bush remembered—he now heard virtually the pussy-grabbing—he did not understand what was about to happen. (Oppenheim did not hold to exist interviewed for this story.)
NBC News asked Rob Silverstein to air the tape by Friday; he wanted to await until Monday or Tuesday, when Access Hollywood's ratings were typically higher. But he never got the take a chance. On the forenoon of Friday, October 7, the tape was sent to David Fahrenthold at The Washington Mail and posted at 4:02 p.m. that day. Bush was shocked: Despite discussions about the footage ambulation, he didn't believe that could legally happen. He saw the Washington Mail story interruption while on a airplane to Los Angeles. Though Bush says he was bodacious his job was safe, he began weeping and didn't stop until the flying landed at LAX. (Officially, only Fahrenthold at the Post and his source know who sent Fahrenthold the tape. But according to two NBC staffers, in that location has been no internal investigation to find out how the network's property, which would be the biggest news story of the election, was leaked. NBC declined to annotate.)
Back in New York, a senior NBC staffer says several female producers approached Oppenheim and then–NBC News chairman Andy Lack, whose tenure would before long become entangled with Lauer's termination among allegations of sexual misconduct and controversy over the network's reporting decisions around Harvey Weinstein. (Lack did non reply to interview requests for this story.) The women said they felt uncomfortable about the 11-year-former tape—virtually Bush-league's laughter, certainly. But also unsettling was the hug Bush facilitated between Trump and the woman he'd just been vocally fantasizing about assaulting.
Bush prepared to apologize on-air on Mon, and believed that he had Lauer's support to stay on. Whether Lauer really had Bush-league's dorsum isn't really clear—1 source with cognition of the interaction told me that Lauer spoke with an executive producer to limited support for Bush. Merely Billy at present doubts the sincerity of the try and says, "That he didn't fight for me is so deeply hurtful because I've known him for admittedly always." (Lauer declined to provide annotate.)
That Sunday night, Bush says, he knew Trump would win the election in the commencement few minutes of the 2nd presidential argue. Moderator Anderson Cooper brought upwards the tape, and Trump responded that Neb Clinton had done worse. The crowd applauded.
Bush-league'S TODAY SHOW career lasted roughly lx days. He learned he was about to be canned when the driver who was supposed to take him to the airport to wing back to New York said, "Lamentable, Mr. Bush. They simply canceled the car." He and his wife had recently and relatively amicably separated, and Bush-league spent months solitary in an apartment, drinking likewise much whiskey and feeling sorry for himself. He wanted to fight NBC, to show the world that he didn't deserve to pay for something someone else said in front of his 33-year-old cocky. It has since been widely reported that he received a fiscal settlement from NBC and that he signed a nondisparagement agreement, though Bush can't say much to me well-nigh that.
Four months into the void, Bush says he told his blood brother, Jonathan, "I'grand paralyzed. I can't get off my couch. I tin't cease crying. I can't stop thinking terrible thoughts of what I want to do to myself if I didn't have children. . . . Help." He attended the Hoffman Process, a weeklong retreat centered on the idea that all of your patterns are formed in childhood and based on your parents; the theory is that you either echo their beliefs or rebel confronting information technology. I of Bush's therapeutic activities involved going alone to a mountain to have a funeral for himself and imagining what people would say nigh him; Bush-league soothed himself past thinking, People know I am not a bad person. His downfall so upset his emotionally withholding father that, Bush says, his dad developed stress-induced shingles. Bush got to see how much his father cared, under the shittiest possible circumstances.
Though Bush kept decorated—reading self-help books, spending time with his daughters, conducting a iii-year apology tour aimed at anyone who might have been offended—things didn't really go better until last September, when he came on as anchor and managing editor at Extra. "I think they were very nervous about hiring me, even after all this time," he says. "I said, 'Listen, I've interacted with people in public so much. I promise there volition be goose egg blowback for hiring me. No one thinks nosotros need to proceed punishing Billy Bush.' "
Fox gave him a one-year trial. After v weeks, ratings were and so skillful the show got a four-year deal. Bush has plans: a Larry King–style interview bear witness non reliant on celebrity talent, a career of bringing joy through broadcasting similar Regis did. But for now, he's glad to do the grown-upwards version of his pre-Today job.
"I'k not just some untouched little sheltered, happy-go-lucky, 'Jeez, everything skillful happens to this guy' [person]," Bush-league says of the upside of public disgrace. "It makes you lot existent." When he interviews people now, he doesn't try to provoke a reaction. Instead, a phrase oftentimes comes up from his subjects: "You lot know." The "yous" is delivered in a high, almost atoning tone, and the "know" drops a full octave, to the depths of the emotional and career nadir information technology references. "You know" is short for Y'all know what it's like to accept your life autumn to shit.
Bush now knows, he says, "that life isn't fair. Everybody has some kind of fucked-up shit. And if you don't know that, and if you lot don't know how to handle that, process that, get through that, then you haven't fully gotten to where yous need to be. I'g afraid that event"—you lot know what event—"was important for my development as a broadcaster, as a journalist, as a man, as a person. I needed to have my donkey handed to me."
BUSH APPEARS to take developed a profound and genuine sympathy, albeit one mostly focused on his ain experiences. When he was in New York in 2017 to exist interviewed well-nigh the record on Good Morning time America, Bush magnanimously agreed to take a meal with Matt Lauer. When Bush says he's less critical now and I request an example, the divorcé says he no longer judges people whose marriages don't concluding. When I ask what it's like to have his public identity subsumed by someone else and mention Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, Bush-league stands with Lewinsky: "Information technology should take been him who went through the beatdown. Non her. She was a kid." He will not tolerate whatsoever humor well-nigh what Trump said on the bus.
He tells a story about being approached by a muscular man in a Whole Foods checkout line. The man laughed, demanding a photo with the "catch 'em past the pussy" guy. Bush said no—it was the worst moment of his life, non some joke—and the man said threateningly that he was going to await for Bush exterior in the parking lot. Bush nervously walked by him with his groceries, checking the reflection in his lookout man to see if he was being followed. Bush got in his car, where he began pounding on the dashboard. "Yeah! Yes!" Bush screams, reenacting the moment by slamming his palms downward on the table so hard the cheese board rattles. "Stand up for yourself, dammit!" He says he's proud of himself and happy with who he is today.
![new york, new york november 18 billy bush and miss usa 2019 cheslie kryst enjoy a hot dog in times square during extra at the levis store times square on november 18, 2019 in new york city photo by john lamparskigetty images](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/gettyimages-1188484848.jpg?resize=480:* "Cheslie Kryst Visits "Extra"")
But the progress is fragile. Eleven days afterwards our time in Maine, Bush phones me while eating. I ask him most something his brother told me, a silly workplace story from Bush's early career, obviously intended by Jonathan to be charming. The question seems to tear a wormhole in Bush's psyche, transporting him to a place where the world learns about a impaired thing he did forever ago and he loses everything considering of information technology. For half an hr, Bush spirals, confirming the story before catastrophizing about another potential downfall, raising his vox and questioning my judgment, telling me nosotros're done. The next 24-hour interval, Bush calls again.
"What happened?" I enquire. He talks and talks, veering betwixt apologies and attempting to explain what it'south like to live in the liminal space between hiding nothing and utter ruin. "One month before a Trump election and I'm the story once again?" he says. "Oh, God. What have I done? I brought it on myself." Information technology feels like he thinks the more he tells me about himself, the less I'll say about him. And I do empathize. Bush-league gained sentience at the same time and in the same way many Americans did: by looking at our own failings—Trump's election, the need for #MeToo and Black Lives Matter—and realizing our role in them. "The work isn't washed," he says. "I don't know if information technology always will be. I like to think that that's the example, only information technology'south clearly not."
A few minutes later on, nosotros're laughing. He calls once more and again, to talk almost NBC—nondisparagingly, of course—and shoot the shit while snacking. "Anna Peele!" Billy Bush says before revealing more than of himself, testing his immunity one more time.
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Source: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a34210708/billy-bush-now-trump-access-hollywood-tape/
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