Former NBC television host Billy Bush said it was President Donald Trump’s voice on an “Access Hollywood” tape dating from 2005. On it, Trump boasts that fame enables him to grope and make sexual advances to women.
“Of course he said it. ‘Grab ’em by the pussy,” Bush wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Times.
The videotape shows Trump riding with former host Bush on an “Access Hollywood” bus, where Trump starts describing at one point how he tried to have sex with a married woman and how other women let him grope them.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump says.
Bush added in his op-ed that seven other people were with them on the bus, but none of them believed what Trump was saying to be true, saying “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.”
The tape appeared during last year’s presidential campaign when Trump acknowledged he had said those words. However, more recently he has denied it was true, dismissing his remarks as harmless talk.
In the last days of the election, numerous women accused Trump of sexual harassment, but he denied that as well. Bush noted that he believed the women, for whom, he said, the tape must have reopened old wounds.
“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. This country is currently trying to reconcile itself to years of power abuse and sexual misconduct. Its leader is wantonly poking the bear,” Bush said.
Be the first to comment