Billy Bush Says He Believes Women Who Accused Trump of Attacking Them

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Billy Bush has opened up about the circumstances surrounding his firing from NBC after footage leaked of him laughing at Donald Trump saying he grabs women by the “p*ssy.”

“He said it. ‘Grab ’em by the p—y,’” he writes in a New York Times op-ed published Sunday. “Of course he said it […] Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and 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.”

“My segments with Donald Trump when I was just a correspondent were part of the reason I got promoted,” Billy says, adding, “Was I acting out of self-interest? You bet I was. Was I alone? Far from it. With Mr. Trump’s outsized viewership back in 2005, everybody from Billy Bush on up to the top brass on the 52nd floor had to stroke the ego of the big cash cow along the way to higher earnings.”

“To these women: I will never know the fear you felt or the frustration of being summarily dismissed and called a liar, but I do know a lot about the anguish of being inexorably linked to Donald Trump,” he writes. “You have my respect and admiration. You are culture warriors at the forefront of necessary change.”