"We laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator,” Billy Bush wrote in his New York Times op-ed. | Rachel Murray/Getty Images for imagine1day Billy Bush on the Trump 'Access Hollywood' tape: 'Of course he said it'

Former “Access Hollywood” host Bill Bush wrote in an op-ed published Sunday that it is indeed President Donald Trump who can be heard on an infamous 2005 recording bragging about sexual assault, an assertion that comes amid reports that Trump has privately claimed it is not his voice on the tape.

“He said it. Grab ’em by the pussy. Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator,” Bush wrote in his New York Times op-ed. The former host said that there had been seven other people on the bus where the recording was captured, aside from him and Trump, who also heard what the president said.


In multiple private conversations reported by the Times, including one with a U.S. senator, the president has suggested that the tape is not authentic and that it is not his voice on the recording.

Publicly, The White House has continued to stand behind the apology Trump issued in the hours after the tape’s publication last year, in which the president chalked up his remarks to “locker room talk” upon which he had never acted.

The “Access Hollywood” tape, on which Trump can be heard bragging that his celebrity status allowed him to sexually assault women without fear of consequence, surfaced last year just as a disparate group of women were coming forward with allegations similar to what the president described on the tape. He and the White House have consistently said all of the allegations, made by more than 16 women, are false.

Bush, who was fired by NBC for his role in the tape, wrote in his op-ed that he believes Trump’s accusers and that the president “is currently indulging in some revisionist history” by denying that he made the remarks that can be heard on the “Access Hollywood” tape. “This has hit a raw nerve in me,” he said.

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“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,” Bush said, addressing Trump’s numerous accusers. “You have my respect and admiration. You are culture warriors at the forefront of necessary change.”