Billy Bush is back to remind Trump that is definitely him on the Access Hollywood tape
Former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush is not here for President Trump's revisionist history.
In an op-ed for The New York Times on Sunday, Bush gave his response to recent Times reports that Trump has been telling people privately he thinks somebody doctored a 2005 Access Hollywood tape released last year featuring him telling Bush he grabbed women "by the pussy" and other vulgarities. "Of course he said it," Bush wrote. "And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America's highest-rated bloviator."
Bush said there were seven other men on the Access Hollywood bus when Trump made his remarks, and "every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real. We now know better." Bush said he believes the more than 20 women who have come forward accusing Trump of everything from forceful kissing to grabbing their genitals, and said Trump reportedly now telling people that's not him on the tape "has hit a raw nerve in me. I can only imagine how it has reopened the wounds of the women who came forward with their stories about him, and did not receive enough attention."
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In 2005, The Apprentice was a hit, and everyone at NBC "had to stroke the ego of the big cash cow along the way to higher earnings," Bush said. "None of us were guilty of knowingly enabling our future president. But all of us were guilty of sacrificing a bit of ourselves in the name of success." You can read the message Bush has for the women who have made complaints against Trump and why he thinks now is a time of "reckoning and reawakening" at The New York Times.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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