Photo: The Washington Post / Getty Images

Billy Bush, the brown-nosing, sweater-vest-clad sidekick to Donald Trump’s rec-center-destroying ’80s movie villain, is currently negotiating his exit from NBC, because in America in 2016 we hold the hosts of our entertainment news shows to a higher standard than our presidential candidates. And he’s hired Los Angeles litigator Marshall Grossman—who, according to his webpage, has “counseled J.K. Rowling, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Mariah Carey, Tommy Hilfiger, Erin Andrews and Larry King in diverse matters“—to help.

The “diverse matter” under counsel this time is Bush’s icky eagerness to abet Trump’s predatory delusion that actress Arianne Zucker agreeing to appear in a pre-taped TV segment with him was the same thing as consenting to sexual contact with him. Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Grossman says that “If Billy had been passive or responded ‘Shut the fuck up’ to Trump, Billy would have been out of a job the next day,” implying that the culture of misogyny at the network goes much deeper than just poor, dumb Billy Bush. And that’s probably true. We’re pretty sure that Grossman didn’t mean it as a critique of systemic rape culture, though.

Anyway, Grossman also suggested that he’s ready to take NBC to court if they can’t agree on some sort of exit package. Bush, for his part, thinks he has leverage in this situation, since he told colleagues about the conversation back in August, when America was dealing with the now positively quaint scandal of an Olympic athlete lying about being robbed at gunpoint. But, as Bush’s main man Trump has said, that was just locker room talk. How were his colleagues to know whether to take him seriously?


Not that Bush has that much to worry about, really. According to gossip rag Page Six, he’s already being considered for a spot at the televised Last Chance Saloon for modern-day outlaws, Dancing With The Stars. While there’s absolutely no official confirmation of this claim, it wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as the show has taken on the likes of Paula Deen and the previously alluded to Ryan Lochte in the past. Good luck finding someone willing to dance with him, though.