Billy Bush tells Stephen Colbert about his infamous Access Hollywood bus ride with Trump

Billy Bush talks Trump with Stephen Colbert
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Late Show)

President Trump's private assertions that it wasn't actually him bragging about groping women in 2005 on the Access Hollywood bus have been met with public reminders from both Access Hollywood and Billy Bush that yes, it was Trump on the bus. Bush spoke to Stephen Colbert on Monday's Late Show about the op-ed he wrote in The New York Times about the bus incident, his subsequent firing by NBC, Matt Lauer, and what Trump's odd brags mean. "By the way," Bush said to Trump, "I would also like to say that's not me on the bus. You don't get to say that, because I was there and the last 14 months of my life I have been dealing with it. You dealt with it for 14 minutes and went on to be the president."

Colbert said that Trump denying being on the bus was "the dumbest thing he could have done," because "no one would have printed" Bush's op-ed and "I couldn't show this footage of the bus unless he denied it again, too. I don't think CBS would let me." Trump's denial "infuriated me on the personal front, and then I ended up googling, and I read an article with all these women's accounts [of Trump harassment], because when that article first came out, it was 13 days after I'd been fired, so I was in my own personal shock," Bush said. "You're reopening wounds on them, too. Enough's enough. Stop playing around with people's lives."

Colbert played the Access Hollywood tape, and Bush called it a "gut punch" now, as it was the first time he heard it, three days before it leaked. In 2005, however, he said he assumed it was crass standup braggadocio. "If I had thought there was a man detailing a sexual assault strategy to me, I would have called the FBI, not just reported it to my executive producer," he said. Watch below. Peter Weber

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