DISGRACED TV host Billy Bush has given his first extended interview about the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Donald Trump boasted about groping women.

Bush — who at the time worked for NBC — was seen on the video bantering with Mr Trump, then the billionaire host of The Apprentice, when the conversation turned to women.

“I don’t even wait,” Mr Trump told a laughing Mr Bush. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything ... grab them by the p***y”.

In his first extended interview since the scandal broke, Mr Bush said he couldn’t believe his career was decimated after the leak, but Mr Trump went on to become president.

“I will admit the irony is glaring. [Trump] has his process for his participation [in the tape], and I have mine. I had to turn this into a positive,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Sunday.

He also said he wished he had tried to change the subject when he was talking to Mr Trump and the then-candidate started saying that he could do anything to women, even “grab ’em by the p***y,” because of his fame.

“Looking back on what was said on that bus, I wish I had changed the topic. I wish I had said: ‘Does anyone want water?’ or ‘It looks like it’s gonna rain.’ He liked TV and competition. I could’ve said, ‘Can you believe the ratings on whatever?’ I didn’t have the strength of character to do it,” he said.

He also said he does not agree with Mr Trump’s excuse that the comments — which were recorded by Access Hollywood on a live mic on a bus in 2005 and revealed during the 2016 election — were just “locker room talk.”

“I’m in a lot of locker rooms, I am an athlete, and no, that is not the type of conversation that goes on or that I’ve participated in,” Mr Bush told the magazine.

He also said he’s not heard from Mr Trump since the scandal, but that if the president asked him to do an interview, he would say no.

“I don’t think I’d interview Trump. It would be a spectacle,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “In television, we love a spectacle, but I’ve come too far and learned too much. There are others that I’d rather interview, like Emmanuel Macron of France.”

Mr Bush also gave an interview on the incident to Good Morning America on Monday, revealing that the video brought his daughter to tears.

“There was a powerful moment, my now 16-year-old daughter called me ... and she was in tears,” Mr Bush, 45, said.

He told his daughter not to worry. “And she said, ‘No. Why were you laughing at the things that he was saying on that bus? Why were you playing along with it, Dad? It wasn’t funny.’”

His response: “‘Mary, I am sorry. And there is no good answer for that.’”

Mr Bush was suspended and then resigned from NBC soon after the tape was released.

The videotape was leaked to the Washington Post in October 2016, at the height of the US presidential election campaign.

Mr Trump, who dismissed his comments as “locker room banter,” issued an apology in a brief video clip.

It was reported in October that Mr Bush was likely to get a $US10 million lump settlement from NBCafter his abrupt ouster following the vulgar revelations on the Mr Trump tape.

Mr Bush is a first cousin of former president George W. Bush, and his uncle is former president George H.W. Bush.