The Trump tape accomplice

Billy Bush is still reeling from “Pussygate”. Last October, at the peak of the US presidential election, an 11-year-old recording was leaked to the press featuring Bush – then a rookie TV reporter – chatting off-camera with Donald Trump. While Trump boasted about grabbing women “by the pussy”, Bush (a nephew of George H.W. Bush) giggled ingratiatingly and egged him on. The tape didn’t stop Trump becoming president, but it did torpedo Bush’s career. He was sacked from his dream job as a presenter at NBC, and pilloried for sexism. But the worst thing, he told The Hollywood Reporter, was explaining himself to his three daughters. The eldest, Mary, then 15, called him in tears when the story broke. “She said, ‘Why were you laughing at the things that he was saying on that bus, Dad? They weren’t funny.’ It hit really hard, and I stopped for a second, and I said, ‘I have no answer for that that’s any good. I am really sorry.’”

Seeing it from his daughters’ perspective was a wake-up call. “When a woman watches that tape – and this is what really hit me – they may be asking themselves, ‘Is that what happens when I walk out of a room? When I walk out of a meeting, is that what they’re saying about me? Are they sizing me up?’ I can’t live with that. If a moment like that arose again, I would shut it down quickly.” Alas, at the time, Bush was just starting out, and “an insecure person, a bit of a pleaser, wanting celebrities to like me and fit in… I wish I had changed the topic. I wish I had said: ‘Does anyone want water?’ or ‘It looks like it’s gonna rain.’ I didn’t have the strength of character to do it.”