Following on his New York Times column (“Yes, Donald Trump, You Said That”), Billy Bush told Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show”: “Enough’s enough — stop playing around with people’s lives!”
Bush was fired fromTV’s “Today” show after his voice was heard in the 2005 Access Hollywood tape.
That was the tape that caused an uproar — but obviously did not derail — Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign when the candidate was heard boasting to Bush that as a celebrity, he can “do anything” with women, including “grab them by the pussy.”
Now Bush is repeating his denunciation of Trump’s reported denial of those comments.
“He, last week, for some reason came out with, ‘That’s not my voice on the tape.’ Like I said, you can’t say that,” Bush said. “That is your voice, I was there, you were there — that’s your voice on the tape.”
Entertainment Weekly noted: “Bush’s visit marked his first late-night appearance since the tape surfaced…. He told Colbert he was offended by Trump’s denial on a personal level, and also on behalf of the women who have gone on the record to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct.”
Bush told Colbert: “You’ve got 20 women … who used their names. We’ve got powerful people being held accountable now, and sometimes there’s anonymous sources. All of these women came out with their names and told their detailed accounts. So when he said this, 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.
“As I read these, I said, ‘Twenty women don’t get together and say, ‘Hey, you know what would be really fun? Let’s take down a powerful guy together, ha ha.’ No, they don’t.”
In the tape in which Trump is heard boasting to Bush when neither apparently was apparently aware a microphone was “live,” Trump says: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful (women — I just atart kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can anythings … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
The campaign controversy erupted a year prior to the Harvey Weinstein Hollywood sexual harassment story created a wave of sexual harassment claims against powerful or well-known men in different industries.