Billy Bush Could Return to TV on 'Extra'

Bush was a part of gossip newsmagazine Access Hollywood for over a decade. He leaped from NBC's gossip show to the third hour of Today in spring 2016.

January 12, 2019

Billy Bush might be returning to television just over two years after he was ousted from the Today show. Bush is in talks to anchor the gossip news show Extra, according to Deadline.

Bush was a part of gossip newsmagazine Access Hollywood for over a decade. He leaped from NBC's gossip show to the third hour of Today in spring 2016. His time on the morning news was short-lived, however, as NBC fired him over Donald Trump's infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" tape.

After Bush was fired, he explained why he can be heard laughing along while Trump describes sexual assault. In an op-ed Bush wrote for the New York Times, he explained that he thought Trump was doing a bit.

"We laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator,” he said. "Every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass stand-up act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real. We now know better.”

Bush copped to acting out of regard for his own career, adding that Trump was NBC's biggest star at the time the tape was recorded.

“Was I acting out of self-interest? You bet I was. Was I alone? Far from it," he wrote. "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.”