Reporting about Billy Bush and a Today show exit has moved from If-dom to When-land.
Talks are ongoing and an announcement could come within days, sources report, at which it is expected NBC News will be saying so-long to Bush, after he was heard on tape having a lewd conversation with Donald Trump about women, including Bush’s then Access Hollywood colleague Nancy O’Dell.
Such an announcement would end Bush’s brief tenure as host of Today‘s 9 AM hour, where he’d replaced Willie Geist because he had all those celebrity connections from his long run as the Peck’s Bad Boy host of NBC’s Access Hollywood.
Bush’s prospects for survival at Today dimmed considerably when SVP Noah Oppenheim announced he was suspended, effective immediately, because “There is simply no excuse for Billy’s language and behavior on that tape.”
Bush had expected to be able to apologize on air this past Monday, having already released a statement about being “embarrassed and ashamed,” hours after WaPo released the ’05 video of the conversation Bush had with Trump as they arrived at the set of an NBC soap. Access Hollywood was doing a segment about Trump’s cameo on the soap opera.
According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Bush is distraught, and his camp is outraged at how he’s
being treated by NBC after 15 years with the company. As they see it, their star is being pushed out for something that happened 11 years back, and for which he has apologized. And – you know this is coming – there has been some pointing in the general direction of Brian Williams, who got caught engaging in creative moldings of the rough clay of truth on NBC’s evening newscast in early 2015, and yet survives at NBC News.
Bush’s job at Today was to deliver to the 9 AM hour an audience that is 60% female. That became considerably more challenging as of Friday, when millions of people began watching an endless loop of Bush cheering on Trump as the real estate developer boasted he’s so famous he can kiss women and grab their genitalia with impunity. On the tape that took over TV news networks that night, Bush is heard giggling when Trump says of Bush’s co-host Nancy O’Dell that he “moved on her like a bitch” and then mock her physical appearance, after which Bush is heard drawing Trump’s attention to the “hot as shit” NBC soap actress waiting to greet them, congratulating Trump that he has “scored,” and then encouraging the actress to hug Trump.
And, if there is any question as to what Bush was encouraging on that tape, White House Press Secy. Josh Earnest, speaking to reporters accompanying POTUS on Air Force One today, put it on the record that Obama found the Bush/Trump conversation “repugnant” and that the behavior Trump described to Bush “constituted sexual assault.”
