Billy Bush: The Infamous Trump Tape, Secrets of Corporate Media, & Megyn Kelly v. Harvey Weinstein

Eight years ago NBC News secretly colluded with the Washington Post to derail Donald Trump’s candidacy. Billy Bush was there and tells the story for the first time. (00:00) Why Corporate Media Management Is So Corrupt (04:57) Megyn Kelly vs. Harvey Weinstein (09:59) What Al Roker Is Really Like (12:33) Billy Bush’s Rise in Media (28:30) The Infamous Trump Tape That Got Billy Fired (44:00) Why Trump Was So Good at TV (55:53) The Beginning of Trump Derangement Syndrome Paid partnerships with: Public Square: https://PublicSquare.com/ Jase Medical: Promo code “Tucker” for extra discount at https://Jasemedical.com Starting January 13th, you can listen to “Hot Mics with Billy Bush" at TuneIn.com/hotmics and watch the show at YouTube.com/@HotMicswithBillyBush Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tucker Carlson?

  When you realize, I mean, you obviously learned the hard way, I did too, but the people who run the business are just not good people. There's some friendly people, there's some, certainly some, um, smart people. There are some people who are good people, but in general, I worked at three different, uh, TV networks full-time and then two others part-time. And I just found as a rule, management, they just weren't people you would make the godparents to your kids.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  A lot of people are afraid. I mean, I just think it's like.

• 0:28Tucker Carlson?

  Is that what it is?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Well, certainly linear television, you know, now the big companies, I think people are terrified. You know, you see management, they don't know where they're gonna be the next day.

• 0:49Tucker Carlson?

  Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show. We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else. And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers. We are honest brokers, here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly. Check out all of our content at TuckerCarlson.com. Here's the episode.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  So leadership is, is hard to find. And, and gutsy leadership. You look back at the, you know, the days of great sitcom television. You look at, you know, Brandon Tardakoff and Grant Tinker and some of these great legends that said, you know what, we're gonna stick with this Seinfeld bomb. It's, he's not, the ratings are terrible, but.

• 1:28Tucker Carlson?

  That's right.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  What a, there's something there and we're gonna hold on to it. And we're just, that, you know, as your audience is shrinking and the gains are shrinking, people are just terrified. They're looking over their shoulder. They're wondering, you know, am I the next to get fired? So.

• 1:46Tucker Carlson?

  I, I, I mean, that's absolutely right. I forgot Seinfeld was a bomb at first.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  It was not, not doing well.

• 1:51Tucker Carlson?

  I totally forgot that.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Imagine someone pulling that off the air. They would do it now. Didn't work after two episodes or three episodes. This didn't work after a year or two years.

• 1:59Tucker Carlson?

  That's, no, it's incredible. They had the runway though, because they were making so much money. NBC was making money in every category then.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And it had some, and it had some good lead in and all that stuff. And then they, they stuck with it. And now it's, you know. Makes more money and reruns still than most original shows.

• 2:16Tucker Carlson?

  That's incredible.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18Tucker Carlson?

  You start, you've been in TV for like 30 years or in broadcasting certainly for 30 years.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23Tucker Carlson?

  Um, I, I, I still think though, even when the business was making a ton of money, that it was a dishonest business. That's the way it felt to me anyway, when I started at CNN.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I look at all the places I've been, it's, uh,

• 2:39Speaker 01

  I think of, when I think of our, I think of the moral high ground, like it doesn't exist.

• 2:45Tucker Carlson?

  What does that mean?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  People grappling for the moral high ground. Anyone who gets fired based upon, you know, for moral purposes, they try to use the morality clause, which every talent has in their contract, the morality clause they lunge for. This is coming from people who don't have a leg to stand on. When it comes to that, it's like, it's just a big laugh. Everyone, you know, the firers are all completely morally compromised.

• 3:13Tucker Carlson?

  So, so well, that's, I mean.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I would just look at each other, let's all look at each other for a second. Really? Do any of us belong standing on this? This is all about gain. Okay. Who's up? Who's down?

• 3:26Tucker Carlson?

  Then why? No, I, of course I know what you're talking about and, um, I, I think that from, I mean, I'm obviously long out of it, but I think of that from afar when I see these people getting all huffy about this or that moral transgression. I'm like, wait a second. You know, you slept with my intern. You killed your own intern or whatever. You know what I mean?

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Let's call the whole thing off.

• 3:47Tucker Carlson?

  No, that's right. But, um, why, I'm just like general question, but why, why not just call you in and say, you know, this isn't working for us financially? Why do they feel the need to dress it up? Not, not, I'm not speaking specifically of you, but it's always like.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Well, that's the Megyn Kelly situation, right? I mean, I love Megyn. Why not call her in and say, we gave you way too big a budget. This is giant and the ratings aren't there. And also you're doing something different. Megyn, I love Megyn. She's a friend. Uh, she was a ferocious attorney interviewing people at nine o'clock at night. And then, you know, the daytime show with, uh, da, da, da, da. It's, you know, like, here's the fresh muffins, everybody. And, you know, it's just all of a sudden, it's like, well, it's like Martha Stewart years ago had a version of The Apprentice. After Donald Trump had The Apprentice, they gave one to Martha. They thought that would be great. But Martha had a different idea. Her idea was. I'm gonna write sweet handwritten notes on Pink Stationery. I'm sorry, we have to let you go. No, that's not the Martha we want.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  The Martha we want, the Martha we love is cold and tough.

• 4:51Tucker Carlson?

  You're the nut cutter.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, nut cutter. You're out of here, bitch, you're gone. That's the Martha we wanted. So, you know, this is, it happens that you have to stay, I guess, you know.

• 5:04Tucker Carlson?

  But Meghan is such a great example, though. So they, they hire Meghan. She's, you know, got a kind of.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Fired by the same man that fired me. And instead of saying, hey, the ratings don't match the $40 million a year budget, or whatever it is, they fire Meghan for asking a question about when blackface

• 5:29Speaker 01

  fell out of vogue or was not acceptable at all for Halloween and things. I mean, remember, think of all the late night comics who are working today that used to regularly do blackface on their shows, okay? And there was a time where if a girl dressed up as Diana Ross, it was like she legitimately loved Diana Ross. But then, you know, it, it, she's, all Meghan did was ask the question, when, give me a, a year or a period when that became absolutely unacceptable to the point that your career and everything will be taken.

• 6:05Tucker Carlson?

  So asking that was the equivalent of like lynching a bunch of people in Mississippi.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they trucked out, you know, different people from the network and, you know, Al Roker and Craig Melvin came out and, and they did a show and they talked about how horrible it was. And, and so they sent Meghan on her way. What Meghan did, I think is what you did, and said, absolutely not. You'll pay me out in, in full. My contract will be paid. And I think Meghan got all 60 some million dollars, or whatever it was, to then go off and build what she's built, which is pretty awesome.

• 6:39Tucker Carlson?

  She's tough, she's a tough woman.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  She's tough.

• 6:41Tucker Carlson?

  And she got tougher going through that. Um, and I think like a lot of people I've known, you either become a better person or a worse person. And she became, I think, a better person.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:50Tucker Carlson?

  Wonderful person, one of my favorite people, actually. Um, so I think it was, you know, a huge victory for her on every level.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I was proud of her. She didn't do anything wrong, but ask a question.

• 7:02Tucker Carlson?

  I know.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  She never said, "We should be allowed to do blackface again." She didn't say that.

• 7:07Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  She said, "When was the..." All she did was raise the question. Now, remember, this is also retribution. The man that was the chairman of NBC News at the time who fired her, uh, she had recently put out, you know, a, uh, an email calling him a liar.

• 7:24Tucker Carlson?

  Who was that?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  To the staff, Andy Lack. She called Andy Lack a liar because she, you know, she said, "Wait a minute. We have someone who has corroborated, you know, Rose McGowan, the actress. We have a, who corroborated that, uh, you know, this in the Me Too movement with, in this whole Weinstein case."

• 7:42Tucker Carlson?

  So just to refresh for people who don't recall, the allegation was, and I think it was true, that NBC had the goods on Harvey Weinstein, that he was behaving in an abusive way, in a legit abusive way toward women.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ronan Farrell was doing his.

• 7:56Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Report, yeah.

• 7:58Tucker Carlson?

  And they sat on it?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  And Ronan alleges that they, uh, they sat on it and said, "We, you know, you, you don't have enough. You don't have anyone who's on camera and in name." And Meghan said, "Wait a minute, yeah, Rose McGowan, in camera, on camera, in name. She's, we've got a name, she'll go." And they, uh, I guess overlooked that and said, or refused to acknowledge it. And so, but the idea was that, you know, the guy, the, the guy who was president of NBC News at the time is, is Noah Oppenheimer, and he's a script writer. He's really a script writer.

• 8:34Tucker Carlson?

  Hmm.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And he's so, you know.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Does he want to write scripts for Harvey? Who knows? Uh, but there's that relationship and Harvey, you know, was never afraid to pick up the phone. I've had Harvey Weinstein call me, "This is a great film. You should have this on your show on Access Hollywood." When I was the host, you know, hammering me to have a, he was a, you know, an animal.

• 8:57Tucker Carlson?

  So he, it seems very likely that he was applying pressure to executives at NBC, including Noah Oppenheimer.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems likely. Have to, have to assume. Well, he'll probably, he would apply pressure to anyone. If he's, if little Billy Bush over at Access Hollywood is getting pressured, then you know that Today Show is.

• 9:13Tucker Carlson?

  For sure. So Meghan, um, pipes up and says, "Actually, Andy, like her boss, what you're saying is not quite right." And they decide, "We gotta kill this woman."

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's retribution. Clean and simple retribution. And I'm sure Meghan's lawyer, Brian Friedman, who's one of the best, you know, lawyers in this game, turned and said, "Oh, no, you're not gonna just..."

• 9:36Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  "She has done absolutely nothing wrong. Nice try. You can try and brand her a racist, which she is not..."

• 9:43Tucker Carlson?

  I forgot.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  "...for asking a question, but you are gonna pay her out in full." And then she's gonna go build her own network. And by the way, I saw her last week that Meghan, uh, surpassed NBC News and YouTube News on her own.

• 9:57Tucker Carlson?

  That's so great!

• 9:59Speaker 01

  So she was, she was crowing about that and I have to say, I smiled. I'm in the comments section, if you look down, by the way. Way to go, girl.

• 10:06Tucker Carlson?

  I love it. So why, and I'd forgotten this part of it, Al Roker and Craig Melvin are two hosts on NBC, both black, and they torpedoed Meghan?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Look, the, the, play ball or not, right? I mean, they were asked to appear and talk about, you know, the severity of it and, and this is when you're in the machine. The severity of blackface and, you know, appropriation and all these things.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Look, these types of situations are offered to you, right? I mean, play ball with the big machine, or maybe you're out next too. Uh, I will say this, Craig Melvin is a, is a really good guy, I like him a lot. He, when I, for the two months that I was at the Today Show, he had the office next to mine. And we would call in response, sing. I liked the guy so much, I would, you know, I would go,

• 11:00Speaker 01

  "It's a beautiful morning," and then he would finish the lyric, and he was just a charmingly lovely guy. Uh, Roker, on the other hand, is a bit vindictive. He's the, uh, he, he is, he's not jovial. He's, uh...

• 11:14Tucker Carlson?

  No, cuz you do think fat people are jovial, just by definitional mode.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Well...

• 11:20Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, I always assumed that.

• 11:23Tucker Carlson?

  Don't you?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Well, uh...

• 11:25Tucker Carlson?

  Like Santa Claus, kinda.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're supposed to be.

• 11:28Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Maybe that makes you mad, but, uh, although Al got himself in shape however he did it, and, uh, and...

• 11:34Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, did he? I haven't seen, I don't have a TV.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Well, he's, uh, he, listen, when I was at the Today Show, and I just got there, a producer of mine called me and said, "Hey, Al Roker just liked a tweet from someone calling you a white-splaining racist." I said, "What?" So I looked at him and said, "Wait, I'm on the air with him every day, you gotta be kidding me." So I went to my boss, the head of NBC, uh, the head of the Today Show, Noah Oppenheimer, and I said, "Hey dude, I can't sit on the air with someone who's gonna be liking tweets that call me names that are insane.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  I haven't done anything of the kind, I don't know what that even means, like, what are you talking about?" So he's like, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry," and he had to go talk to, you know...

• 12:25Tucker Carlson?

  He'd talk, "I'll talk to him."

• 12:27Speaker 01

  But you'd file him under the group of people who did not want me there, right? So I, I, there's a group that didn't, and, and, you know, Matt Lauer and...

• 12:33Tucker Carlson?

  Did Roker ever say, "I think you're a racist?"

• 12:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:37Tucker Carlson?

  To your face?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  "Oh, hey, Bushman, how are ya?" But liked this thing, and, but I could feel like, when I got to the Today Show, there was definitely...

• 12:47Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, where'd you been? Just get, get.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Access Hollywood for 15 years.

• 12:51Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, in LA.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Let me give you the brief of how I got to the Today Show.

• 12:55Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  I built some leverage. I made, I got a relationship with the woman who was the head of talent for ABC News, Good Morning America.

• 13:06Tucker Carlson?

  Who's that?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  And her name's Barbara Fedita. She ended up offering me a job. Ben Sherwood was running ABC News at the time. They offered me a job for Good Morning America to leave Access Hollywood and become like a national correspondent, but rotating in in the studio and get your shot, basically.

• 13:27Tucker Carlson?

  Can you back me up even more? How'd you wind up on Access Hollywood?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I was, I did something local. I did some local feature reports back at WNBC in New York after doing radio for six years. Started in radio in New Hampshire, of all places, right out of college. Then I went to DC and my own morning show there for five years. Like a, you know, a morning zoo type of morning show. And then I did this local thing in, on television, just my own feature reports, fun stuff that I would write and edit and like, that made me laugh. And people liked it. And so ultimately, they came to me and said, what's your deal? We'd like to have you, we, we're looking for an East Coast correspondent for our show, Access Hollywood.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  You get to do red carpets and meet all kinds of movie stars. Okay. Sounds good to me. So then I started doing that in the end of 2001.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  And, you know, moved to the Today Show in 2016 and was there for 15 years.

• 14:32Tucker Carlson?

  What was that like?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I mean, it was really fun in the beginning. It was just awesome. You know, back when must see TV was on Thursday nights. So, you know, like, you know, the ratings were big. There was car service. It was super fun. I got to do all these events and I sort of moved my way up. And in 2004, they moved me to Los Angeles to become the host of it. And I'm out there, you know, until I said, God, I, I, am I gonna die doing this? Like, I gotta change it up. So I put this, like, plan into effect to make some inroads.

• 15:06Tucker Carlson?

  But you could have stayed forever, right?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I could have stayed forever. Yeah. But I really wanted to get to like a Regis Philbin style, you know, morning show.

• 15:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Fun, warm. And that was when I made the move to Good Morning America. Then NBC said, wait a minute. Whoa. Leverage is that thing? They know when you have it or you don't.

• 15:26Tucker Carlson?

  That's right.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  They knew I had it. They knew I was moving and so they said, okay, we'll give you the nine o'clock hour at the Today Show. It's yours. Come on in.

• 15:34Tucker Carlson?

  When was that?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And that was 2000. So I made the move, you know, my first day on the air at the Today Show was, uh, at, at the Rio Olympics.

• 15:46Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Brazil.

• 15:47Tucker Carlson?

  In the summer of 16.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  In the summer of 16. And my last day was October 7.

• 15:55Tucker Carlson?

  So sorry to laugh.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was exactly two months.

• 15:58Tucker Carlson?

  In the interest of honesty, we, we went to high school together and dated sisters. So we've known each other for a while.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  We should get into that.

• 16:03Tucker Carlson?

  We don't need to get into that, but I'm just saying.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Your wife's younger sister, my first love.

• 16:09Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. And, um, so I, I, obviously I was watching all this carefully as it unfolded. Um, I just, I felt phony not saying that. Uh, so you, you're living in LA, wife and three kids. You plan to move them back to the East Coast. Um, you go to Rio, big deal. It's the Olympics. NBC has the Olympics. It's, this is how they're gonna roll you out.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:33Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Heck of a rollout.

• 16:34Tucker Carlson?

  Heck of a rollout.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Viewership's always up the whole thing.

• 16:37Tucker Carlson?

  It's the craziest viewership of the cycle. Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:40Tucker Carlson?

  And you get to Rio, I'll never forget this. Um, and you got basically under my, like, right away, the, the knives came out for you on staff.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Right away.

• 16:51Tucker Carlson?

  What, what happened?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Well, remember the Ryan Lochte story. The Ryan Lochte story broke. It was big. Ryan Lochte was held at gunpoint overnight. They went after, after swimming competitions. He and some other swimmers went out, got drunk, partied, and then they were at a gas station in Rio and they were held at gunpoint. Anyway, we wake up this morning, the morning after this, read it. I'm like, oh my gosh, this story about Ryan Lochte. Two hours later, somehow I run into Ryan Lochte. And he's just bumbling down the street with vodka, with vodka breath. Just like, just, and he's, but he's by himself and just bumbling. And I've got an iPhone on me and I'm like, this is a huge story.

• 17:35Tucker Carlson?

  Just walking down the street in Rio.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  This is one of our major athletes held at gunpoint in a foreign country at the Olympics. This is, this is massive. All I have is this. So I give to my co-host and friend who's with me. I said, roll this, Lochte, come here. And I pull him over and I said, roll the camera. I have a minute and 42 seconds still on here. It's all I got before the Olympic committee, US Olympic committee representative, saw me across the street, talking to Ryan Lochte on an iPhone. And they buck over to stop me, but I get him to tell me what happened. Amazing. And I'm like, wow, because the second week of the Olympics is always a little slow. You got swimming and you got gymnastics and all the big things in the first week. And it's only track and field.

• 18:19Tucker Carlson?

  It's like pole vault.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  And it's like, you need something else. Like a storyline would be great. All of a sudden, we have Olympic athletes at gunpoint. This is incredible. And Lochte tells me this story and I go on and, well, it becomes something else. I mean, first of all, Al Roker goes crazy on me and he's like, no, this American apologist stuff begins and the narrative is set.

• 18:40Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, I don't understand. So this seems like a legit scoop.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  How could Ryan Lochte do this? He's a terrible, a terrible American with these, you know, this, this entitled American, uh, bravado, you know, and, and his friends. Cause he was apparently, he had torn down a poster outside of the bathroom of this gas station and, and they, and all these terrible things that they were doing. No, they were held at gunpoint by terrible people. And.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  I said, wait a minute, we don't know that.

• 19:08Tucker Carlson?

  This is live on the air.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, live on the air. I said, wait a minute, we don't know that. All we're getting is that Ryan Lochte did all these terrible things from the Minister of Information of the Rio Police, not known to be the least corrupt police organization in the world. Hello. So, uh, I said, hang on for a second. Why would we take that? It's like taking the Minister of, you know, you know, of, in Gaza, they're making the Minister, getting his statistics. You don't, someone who's obviously biased. So I said, okay, uh, just calm down. We don't know anything about what these guys did. In the end, when everything came out, Ryan Lochte didn't lie about anything but one thing.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  He said he was sitting at gunpoint. He was actually kneeling at gunpoint. That's it. So in other words, everything he said was totally true. And the entire US media organization, led by NBC, because we're on the ground, totally savaged this guy.

• 20:08Tucker Carlson?

  Ryan Lochte?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  How a horrible, American, entitled, you know, this, this apologist attitude has come, you know, to, to think he can do anything he wants.

• 20:18Tucker Carlson?

  He was the victim of a violent crime.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Totally the victim. Yeah.

• 20:21Tucker Carlson?

  Why do you think they did that?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  And by the way, I want, and he capitulated and he like did this whole apology thing and he did an interview with Matt Lauer.

• 20:29Tucker Carlson?

  He apologized for being held at gunpoint?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  He was like, I'm sorry, I, I guess I did pull the thing down or the, I don't know what. He just apologized for what they told him to apologize for. And in the end, he did nothing. He did nothing wrong.

• 20:41Tucker Carlson?

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• 21:26Tucker Carlson?

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• 23:39Tucker Carlson?

  Whatever happened to him, do you know?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  I know.

• 23:42Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  I mean, he did a reality show for a minute or tried to.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Did he dance with the stars, Tucker, like you? I don't know.

• 23:50Tucker Carlson?

  I never did that, Billy.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yes, you did.

• 23:52Tucker Carlson?

  That's bullshit.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  And you were terrible.

• 23:55Tucker Carlson?

  Didn't do that. I think, actually, I had, I was staying at your house during that.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Tom Delay was worse, but you were bad.

• 24:03Tucker Carlson?

  Well, that's something.

• 24:06Tucker Carlson?

  But I still don't understand. Like, this, this was basically decision by, this was from a viewer's perspective. Al Roker decided to change the story and everyone followed him?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Well, he was sipping Capararcas within this, this, this cocktail and he started going after me like I'm defending, you know, this, this Ryan Lochte who behaved like, we need to be able to call out our own people who behave terribly and poor Ryan. I said, we don't, you can pull it up on YouTube. We don't have the information. We don't know. Just wait. Wait. And then two weeks later, when the breeze blows through and everything's done, it comes out, absolutely, Ryan Lochte told the truth.

• 24:45Tucker Carlson?

  What do you think Roker's so angry about? I mean, he's like a weather guy on some morning show and he gets paid all this money and everyone's, you know, thinks he's jolly.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Everybody wants to be more. Everybody wants to be a great interviewer, but you have to prepare for those and you have to be curious and.

• 24:59Tucker Carlson?

  Why, but what's he mad about? He's, he seems to have succeeded far beyond.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I don't know. People in, the people in, in network, you know, the, these big organizations are territorial. Very territorial. You can look back at the stories of, you know, Ashley Banfield's story of, of, of, you know, the bigwigs ahead of her, keeping her down, not wanting her to rise up. I was always very close to Matt Lauer and Al Roker until I got to the Today Show. And then I had like targets on my back from the moment I got there.

• 25:30Tucker Carlson?

  Both of them.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  There's two worlds. There's the, the, yeah. And, you know. Remember, my relationship with them before was as the guy on Access Hollywood, who basically would promote them.

• 25:41Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Right? Our job was to promote everything on NBC. Whether that's The Apprentice, or whether that's the Today Show, I am the chief rabble-rouser entertainment guy. We cover everything, but NBC's stuff is first. Yes, you can cover, you know, 24 on Fox, but first, cover Seinfeld, because it's on NBC. So we promote our own things. It's just like a football announcer saying, "And tonight, don't be a... Make sure you catch NCIS LA, tonight at something on CBS." It's a lot of promotion. Access Hollywood was basically a promotional vehicle. So when I showed up as, "No, I'm now one of you,

• 26:23Speaker 01

  who could potentially replace you one day, because you're..."

• 26:27Tucker Carlson?

  Old.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Older than I am, and that's just the way it works. Then, you know, you can feel the energy change. So when I ultimately got fired from NBC, it was

• 26:40Speaker 01

  a lot to do with the inner workings, the politics of being the new guy there.

• 26:47Tucker Carlson?

  Did you... What I find so interesting about it, everything you're saying makes sense, of course, I've seen it a lot. But what's interesting is that nobody said anything to your face, that it was all feline passive-aggression treachery.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've written a... I have a great chapter that I wrote, and I wrote it years ago, so I wouldn't forget any details of what exactly happened with my firing. And it was just, it was... It's unbelievable. I was playing catch-up the whole time. I found out that the Access Hollywood bus tape was in the NBC News building by Matt Lauer. Matt Lauer came to me after I got off the air at the Today Show on a Tuesday morning, and he said, "Hey, what are you gonna do about the tape?" I said, "What? What do you mean, Matt?" And he said, "The tape, the bus tape, you and Trump and the whole thing." I said, "What are you talking about?"

• 27:41Speaker 01

  I said, what do you, what do you mean that this, and I knew what the, I remembered the tape. It's 11 years old at the time.

• 27:47Tucker Carlson?

  So back up, what, just start at the beginning of this story. What, what, what was this tape? When was it shot? What is it?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  It was shot in 2005. It was the end of Access Hollywood was rebuilding a studio. So we had to find a reason to get out of the studio. So we did access across America. It started in Miami and the, and it goes to whatever to Atlanta. And then it goes to, it works its way back to Los Angeles, giving the studio people enough, the, the workers enough time to finish a new studio. So it's just a, you know, it was sponsored and the whole thing. But the last stop.

• 28:25Tucker Carlson?

  How long was it?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Was pick up Donald Trump at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles and drive him 20 minutes to the studio, deliver him because he's going to make an appearance on Days of Our Lives. And he's going to be playing him, he's going to be playing a big, gaudy billionaire who gets hit on by, you know, a, a young starlet. That's his character.

• 28:51Tucker Carlson?

  Oh.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  You figure Donald should be able to pull this off.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  So the bus is pulling in and the cameraman, okay, wait, the cameraman, get off the bus. We gotta go down to the end so we can catch your arrival. So the cameraman get off and they run 300 yards ahead while the bus is waiting, stopped, waiting to, you know, for it's, to film its approach. Cause the, the woman who is going to be acting with is waiting and there's a, there's a welcoming crew from Days of Our Lives are all waiting and this is the arrival shot. So the cameraman gets off. He never stops recording.

• 29:25Tucker Carlson?

  They never.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  We're still, we're still sitting on the bus with the microphones and he gets off.

• 29:30Tucker Carlson?

  They never stopped recording.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  But they, but it's, the red light is still on. So the audio is still recording as the cameraman, you know, runs away. Can't imagine worse luck, right? But who cares? It's just Donald Trump from The Apprentice.

• 29:42Tucker Carlson?

  And you're just doing this silly little thing.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  This is 2005 and we're doing this silly arrival shot. Well, the Donald at that point while we're waiting, you know, he gets into his, what he likes to talk about, you know, and you don't, you don't choose the agenda with Donald Trump. He talks at you. And, uh, you know, he started by talking about, um, my co-host, Nancy O'Dell.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  And he, you know, she's so hot. What happened that that I handled that beautifully? And he keeps going.

• 30:17Tucker Carlson?

  I'm sorry. I'm just too amused.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  He just starts talking and talking and talking. And well, everybody knows what what he talked about. And then when we arrive to the shot, except for the end part, the the most amazing thing about the whole famous line that starts with grab.

• 30:33Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  I just can't even say it because it's never funny to me, but

• 30:38Speaker 01

  the whole, the amazing part about all that is I have no recollection. The first time I ever heard that was 2016.

• 30:47Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Days before they fired me because I always remembered it for the personal connection. Him talking about taking Nancy O'Dell furniture shopping. And I thought, oh, my God, that is so funny.

• 30:59Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, why?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Like he took Nancy O'Dell furniture shopping because he was trying to hook up with her and he's like, here, let me, I'll buy you this coffee. I'll buy you an armoire. I was like, this is so absurd. It's so, oh, my God.

• 31:10Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think it was true?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  But here's the amazing thing. Oh, yeah, definitely. I got a hundred percent.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  I got off the the bus and oh, so the cameras are there. We returned to filming and I'm like, hey, Donald, meet the person you're acting with. And the whole thing lines up and looks like I'm feeding a wolf to this, you know, feeding this lovely damsel to this wolf after what has just been said, but no one knows what's just been said. And I don't even recall hearing the thing.

• 31:37Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  I didn't hear that till 11 years later. The whole, it's just a giant shit show.

• 31:42Tucker Carlson?

  Well, but also you work in LA in the middle of Hollywood. Like you hear a lot of stuff every day. I mean.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  I mean, Julia Roberts has said worse to me. I mean, not really, but like, I mean.

• 31:52Tucker Carlson?

  Right. I mean, I know the world and you were at the center of the world. So like every day people are saying things they wouldn't want to be on camera.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Right. But you also have this, we worked in this incredibly weird world where you have like 10, 15 minutes, in my case, forever. Because it was a drive across town to really. Talk to someone before you talk to someone.

• 32:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, of course.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Right? You and I chit chatted for 15 minutes before we turned these microphones on. Just like, "How you doing? What's going on?" Like, "How was the drive?"

• 32:22Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, no, but-

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I've known you for a long time. But that's, but if I, if you didn't know me, you would have that time-

• 32:27Tucker Carlson?

  Always, always.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  -to establish a little rapport.

• 32:30Tucker Carlson?

  Always.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And you meet them where they are.

• 32:32Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  So, uh, and with him, you don't, you don't have a choice. You know, it's never, "How the wife, how's the wife and kids?" It's, there's never that. "There's no one I did the other day?" "Great shot over the bunker. You can only hope it's a golf day." But then, listen, here's the, the amazing thing is, after that happened, like, if you wanna look at, like, I reported it. I didn't report it like, "He said terrible things on the bus. This is awful." I reported it to my, ran upstairs to my boss and I go, "Oh, my God." Every time with Trump, it's something else. The animal, you wouldn't believe what he did. He tried to take Nancy O'Dell furniture shopping and, so he could get laid. I was like, "This is crazy." And I'm telling him, "Yeah, you're not gonna believe this."

• 33:17Speaker 01

  The next day, that boss says, "Oh, no, I heard the whole thing, what you told me yesterday." "The guy was rolling." I said, "He rolled on the tape?" I said, "Well, you better do something with that tape." And the reason I said that was for no, nothing that I did, nothing that I was ashamed of, I don't care. The reason was, in 2005, Donald Trump was the biggest star on NBC, not news, on NBC, making a hundred million dollars in profit a year for the network. Had that tape leaked out in 2005, when it happened, heads would have rolled, including mine, because you just completely tarnished our major cash cow.

• 34:00Tucker Carlson?

  But can I just ask, I mean, I've been around, you know, microphones and cameras my whole life, and my understanding to this day is you don't tape people without their knowledge.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  In the state of California, it's, well, this is what's amazing. So, in 11 years later, NBC News themselves leaks that tape to the Washington Post. Of that, there is no doubt. They never launched an internal invest. You have a proprietary piece of property that could affect a presidential election, and it gets out of your building to someone else. You don't launch an investigation as to how that got out? Like, you've got to, you've got to find out how that got out. Well, it would have ended in five seconds. Uh, and it got shoved off to the Washington Post.

• 34:43Tucker Carlson?

  Well, I guess what I'm saying is it's unfair to tape people when they don't know they're being taped.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  It's also illegal. In the state of California, if both people don't know, it's litigious. That's why they gave it to the Washington Post. You got the biggest story of the entire, the October surprise of all surprises. You've got it in your hands and you leak it to someone else? Why, you're a giant news division. This is so many clicks for you. This is so much traffic. Why wouldn't you own that? Well, you can't because Donald is litigious, first of all. And second of all, there's enough reason to believe he, there's no camera on the bus that he didn't know he's being recorded.

• 35:23Tucker Carlson?

  But it's also wrong. You shouldn't do that. I mean, why is it different putting a camera in somebody's bedroom or the bathroom? Like, what, it is wrong.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  So that's what I fought all week long before I got fired.

• 35:33Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, so, okay, so, but let's get to, it's actually more interesting story than I realized. So this happens, 2005 now, almost 20 years ago. Um, you tell your boss, he's seen the tape? He has seen the off, the bus, the bus portion of the tape when you talked to him?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  He heard it that one day and told me, I never heard it. He just said, oh, yeah, the, the audio was on. He told me, I heard the Nancy stuff. He never mentioned anything about the, the word grab never came up.

• 36:00Tucker Carlson?

  Who was your boss?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Rob Silverstein.

• 36:02Tucker Carlson?

  Ah, yes. Ah, yes.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Um, but here's the crazy thing.

• 36:07Tucker Carlson?

  Executive producer of the show.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Executive producer of Access Hollywood. But we'll get to how he's become the executive producer of my new show once again. How that's come full circle.

• 36:15Tucker Carlson?

  What?

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Forgiveness, Tucker. It's an amazingly powerful thing.

• 36:19Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, my, you're dying on my mind.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  You ought to try it. He's working for, don't think I didn't kick his teeth in. Don't think we didn't fall out for two years. Don't think I didn't take back the Rolex I gave him as a gift when I moved from the, to, from the, from the Pee Wees to the big leagues. When I got my big job at the Today Show, I had a party and I said, here you go, baby. I'm giving you a Rolex. Thanks for helping me get there. Two months later, I said, you son of a bitch, if I ever see you, I'm gonna kill you and I'm gonna, give me that fucking, that Rolex back.

• 36:48Tucker Carlson?

  And now he's your producer again.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Now he's my producer again, because you know what? We so many, just sometimes you have a, he's. I don't blame him because he was looking to. He asked for permission when he sent the tape to NBC News. He was asking for permission to use it.

• 37:04Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, so, okay. Let's just back up here because I know the story, but others don't. So you, um, and Rob Silverstein was your friend too, not just your P. Yeah, yeah. So, um.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Spent the night together, sharing a bed during the blackout in New York in like 2012 or whatever.

• 37:22Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Because we had nowhere to, yeah, sweating next to this guy.

• 37:27Tucker Carlson?

  So, uh, that's the last you hear of this tape. For 11 years until you get off the air, if I'm following this correctly. And Matt Lauer comes up to you and you're not thinking about the tape. No one ever mentioned the tape again. The tape is just like.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  The day before that Monday, Rob Silverstein called me in New York and he just said, hey, just, you know, NBC's asking a minute of the tape with Trump and the whole thing. They like, they may wanna like, look at the, I, I, they asking for a transcript. I may send it to him because Trump said some crazy things. You, don't worry about you, you, you, you, you don't do anything on it. You don't even say a thing. I say, okay. Uh, whatever, it doesn't mean anything. Then the next day, he says, I'll call you if anything happens. Well, I never got a call from him. The next thing I hear about it is it's in Lacks hands. Andy Lack, the chairman of NBC News has it. And Kim, whatever her name is, the, the legal counsel, the lawyer, she's on it.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  And Lauer says, you, you should probably go see Andy Lack, you know, before this thing. They have it. And I was like, oh, oh my God, okay. So I went, left the studio, went across, up to Andy Lack's office and Noah was there. And I said, hey, Noah, what's going on? He said, yes, we got this tape. I said, listen, I've never, I don't know what tape. Like I know what about the tape, I just, but I've never heard it. Like I've. So he played it for me. And I will never forget, sitting in Noah Oppenheimer's office, the president, the general manager of the Today Show, as he played the part, and when it got to the grab line, Noah laughed. I remember he was in the room.

• 39:03Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, he laughed?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  He laughed! Oh, and I guess I got fired for laughing, but there he is laughing, because when you hear something that absurd, what do you do?

• 39:12Tucker Carlson?

  You laugh.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Mostly laugh. It's like a nervous laugh. It's a...

• 39:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  You know? I've never heard anyone say what he said. I was like, this can't be real, obviously, so I'm going to laugh. Uh... But I don't recall it, so it's just the first time I ever heard it was, was that day, and I went, oh, dear. And then I watched the tape, and I saw the arrival and the greeting, and I said, oh, my God, the optics of this are just horrible. I'm the first to admit, this looks terrible. And what happened in the ensuing days was, hey, what do you want to do about this, Billy? And I said...

• 39:49Tucker Carlson?

  What do you want to do?

• 39:50Speaker 01

  I said, what do I... It's crazy. Yeah. This is from Andy Lack, the chairman of NBC News, who was the only person in the world I'd hit with a tire iron if he was sitting right here.

• 39:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  And Noah, I wouldn't. I've forgiven Noah. Andy, tire iron. Um...

• 40:06Speaker 01

  I... Truth. Uh, but in the ensuing days, it was all, what do you want to do? Uh, we could do something with this, you know, these things. And remember this quote, these things have a way of getting out. That's what Noah said to me, and I'm like, no, they don't. You can't... Listen. What if, if I become the guy who's preamble before interviews gets used, that celeb, that whoever that public figure is, is never going to talk to me. I'm going to be the guy that no one wants to talk to.

• 40:36Tucker Carlson?

  A leaks private tape.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Don't talk to Billy Bush before the interview. The cameras are rolling, because he's probably secretly rolling. It's journalism 101, and no one came to my defense on it, of course, because they're all... It was such a hot time. Everybody was just, you know, their, their, their heads were in the sand. But...

• 40:54Speaker 01

  That whole week was what do you want to do? And I said, you can't use this. It's illegal to do that to him, to anyone. I wasn't defending Trump. I'm defending my reputation as a journalist and someone who wants to interview other people in the future.

• 41:08Tucker Carlson?

  And just basic fairness.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:10Tucker Carlson?

  And also, by the way, you were paid to interview Trump and to do this set piece within the scene with him. That was your job. Like you didn't, it's not like you and Trump were like in a bar or something. It was like this, you were, you were working for the same company.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  It was a primary job for me then. Remember this, The Apprentice was the biggest thing on TV and Trump, every other celebrity had a publicist that followed them around and said, you can't say this, you can't do that, you can't use this. You know, they'd try to shape your message. Trump's publicist literally just carried like a bag for him because Trump is gonna do, what Trump's gonna wanna do. He doesn't care. So he was a soundbite machine. I was with him three days a week and when I wasn't with him, my boss would say, how do you get the next thing with Trump? We gotta, Trump's, we need him for, we need him every day if we can have him. Cause he's saying things like, never, the horrible stuff he said about Rosie. But every entertainment show couldn't wait to run that as a headline.

• 42:09Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Right? No one does this.

• 42:12Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Except Trump. He's gold for ratings.

• 42:15Tucker Carlson?

  He's unbelievable. In fact, he's helped.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  So I was constantly tasked with, get on his plane, get into his apartment, go on a house tour with him. One of the great things I did with Donald Trump, still available online, check it out. We went voting together in 2004, Bush, Kerry. We went voting together and it was, we went to four different polling places and he wasn't registered at any of them. It was hysterical and he kept getting furious. Ah, so I just did all these things and.

• 42:46Tucker Carlson?

  Did you have fun?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  It was part of my job. Like I got promoted. I ultimately became the host of the show because of the amazing things I did with Donald Trump. I dressed up in, in disguise and snuck into the season two auditions of The Apprentice. And I auditioned as a mustache and I had a cowboy hat on. I called myself Richard Broome and I made my way over to a table and Donald was sitting at the table and I sat down with eight other strangers and as he asked questions of everybody, see if they'd be a part of the cast.

• 43:18Tucker Carlson?

  No way.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  And he looks at me and he goes, you're a weird looking fellow.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  He took off your hat. I took it off and he goes, "If I don't know, that's Billy Bush." I don't know. We had a huge laugh. I mean, let me tell you something. Donald Trump was the greatest reality television host ever, ever, ever. He was, especially for our show and for that, that show began as something else. And it turned out, you know what? Why don't we instead of doing 15 minutes of the boardroom at the end, let's do 15 minutes of stupid lemonade sales and then 55 minutes or 45 minutes of the boardroom at the end? Cause that's what people really wanna see.

• 43:56Tucker Carlson?

  Cause the drama.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  The drama. Trump going, "Look, Brandy, I can't believe it. You look like, can you believe what Sarah said about you? It's terrible. She shouldn't say that about you. Sarah, you look like a nice person. Why would you do that to Brandy?" And he even just pit these fights, right? And, and people loved it. Yeah.

• 44:11Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 44:13Tucker Carlson?

  It was five years ago this month that people started to drop dead in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Five years since the beginning of COVID. Tens of millions dead. Societies reordered completely. Economies destroyed. And yet, for some reason, we still don't know answers to the most basic questions. Where did this virus come from? How did it get here? Why did the government tell us to do things they knew wouldn't work? None of those questions have been adequately answered. And one man knows those answers. His name is Dr. Tony Fauci. Until now, nobody has really pressed. And now, a documentary filmmaker called Jenner First is out with a new film explaining exactly what happened. The film is called Thank You, Dr. Fauci. Jenner First spent years trying to get answers. And in

• 44:58Tucker Carlson?

  that time, as he awaited Dr. Fauci's response, he went through tens of thousands of pages of documents and pieced together the story, which is shocking. We are proud to host that documentary here on TCN from December 20th to January 19th. You will see it exclusively here on TCN. Again, it's called Thank You, Dr. Fauci. And it's worth it.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

• 45:49Tucker Carlson?

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• 46:32Tucker Carlson?

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• 47:17Speaker 01

  How was he regarded at NBC? Oh, he was... This is a story that'll blow your mind. My brother is a great healthcare executive. Yes. Built a company called... Famous. Athena Health. The chairman of his board at one point became Jeff Immelt, who became the chairman of my brother's board. My brother reported to him. From GE? As the CEO, yeah. And from GE, and GE, you know, owned NBC long before, when The Apprentice was just coming on. And Donald wanted his contract renegotiated, and he demanded, "Forget Jeff Zucker and the NBC people. I want Immelt to do this with me. I want the CEO of GE to do my second-year deal."

• 48:00Speaker 01

  And Immelt told my brother, he's like, you know, "If there were cameras at that lunch, or a little hidden microphone at that lunch, I guess I would have been fired." Because you just go with what Trump wants to go with. Yeah. And they were similar.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know what I mean? Because here's one thing about Trump. He is... His loyalty isn't long. If you, like, if I were to say to him, "Hey, how dare you talk like that? Like, I'm not gonna be on this bus. You shouldn't say such terrible things. I will... I'm leaving." And I took a moral stand and walked out, or whatever I did. "Get rid of Billy Bush. We don't like him. We're doing entertainment tonight only now." That's it. And then you're done. So literally, my job, hired to, was to make sure we had him as often as possible and get great soundbites and kick ass. Did you ever hear any NBC executives complain about him? Or his politics? No. No, but I do know that, look, he was placated as every big star of every big show in the business is,

• 48:59Speaker 01

  all the way up to the, you know, ivory tower. 100%. From Jeff Zucker to Jeff Immelt. The whole... You know, here's a beautiful irony. Jeff Zucker, who I like, was running the show at NBC Entertainment. He's the one who put... He built this... If Trump is Frankenstein, he built him in the laboratory. And they built this apprentice, and they made him, you know, the wheeling and dealing machine on his helicopter, this incredible image. Can you imagine a better image on network television crafted for you than that one? And Zucker then became, years later...

• 49:38Speaker 01

  The head of the resistance. The guy that built him then became the head of the resistance at CNN.

• 49:43Tucker Carlson?

  It's amazing.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  It's amazing. In a matter of 10 years, like this recording of this bus tape that was a I would have been fired. It had leaked out then for hurting the star. 11 years later and a lawsuit over Miss Universe and whatever else. NBC feels completely differently about Donald Trump. And now it's get him at all costs. Get him out of this presidential race at all costs. I don't care who we have to kill or shooting ahead on the way, including Billy Bush, no problem. Get rid of him. So that's.

• 50:15Tucker Carlson?

  It's an incredible.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  It's an incredible.

• 50:18Tucker Carlson?

  There was so much going on during that period that it, it, you know, of course, the, the tape and that one phrase still kind of hangs in the air, but this, but the actual story never really got cold told. There was too much chaos.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  No, it's never been told.

• 50:32Tucker Carlson?

  It was like the opening salvoes of a war and like an atrocity was left unexamined.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  No, and I look, I was a sitting duck, right? It was a hot time. People were feeling really strongly, you know, as they, as they still are. Trump is, you, you, it's like country music, love him or hate him, right? I mean.

• 50:49Tucker Carlson?

  So what was that? Did you, okay, so you move over and that, just to be, I just want to say this for the third time. That tape after you spoke to Rob about it, to your EP about it the next day was never mentioned again for 11 years.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Uh, no, never mentioned again. It was, no, intermittently over the years, you'd be like, God, that reminds me of, remember the time that Trump told me about that? But it was always about Nancy O'Dell, maybe every three years or something.

• 51:18Tucker Carlson?

  Right, right.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Maybe five times total between 2005 and 2016.

• 51:23Tucker Carlson?

  Nancy O'Dell.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  But always as a reference because Trump said something that reminded me of.

• 51:27Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  The whole thing.

• 51:29Tucker Carlson?

  Was Trump political, by the way? Was he regarded as political when he was the host of The Apprentice?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  No. God, no. No.

• 51:37Tucker Carlson?

  Not at all.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  The idea that this, if you want to talk about just bad luck in general, the idea that Donald Trump in 2005 would one day run for president, and he's talked about it forever, but he would do it to just mix things up.

• 51:50Tucker Carlson?

  He called me right before he announced and said, I'm going to announce, and I laughed.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:54Tucker Carlson?

  Because I'd known him all these years, and I, I thought of Trump as a person who was not serious about politics, who was going to use it to sell a book or promote a show or whatever.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Or reboot the image after The Apprentice had run its course. It was very successful.

• 52:08Tucker Carlson?

  So I literally laughed at him when he called me. I was in the car. I'll never forget it.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:12Tucker Carlson?

  And he was totally calm, and he said, yep, I see what you're saying, but I think this time I'm going to surprise you. And he, he sounded totally different, but, but I agree with you. You knew him much better than I did.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  When he came down the escalator, I said, oh, my God, this is going to be unbelievable. This is going to, he's going to, he's having so much fun.

• 52:28Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  This is a joke. He's having fun, and all of a sudden, everything he said that people didn't like, he got more popular, and he's like, what? I don't even think he, he, he was surprised more than anyone. Like, wait a minute, they like me more? Okay. And he just steamrolled everybody.

• 52:48Tucker Carlson?

  So do, wow, wow, man, that's also, that's also amazing in retrospect. But did he, and all the time you spent, spent with him, did he ever say anything you thought was political at all?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:59Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Never. No, he was, it was, it was not, not a chance. We went voting in 2004, the beginning of The Apprentice, and he, I remember him laughing. I said, have you endorsed one of the, I mean, have you given money to one of the candidates? Are you behind one of them? He goes, I am. I said, which one? And he goes, I can't do that. I said, is there a chance that it's both of them? And he said, there is. Like, he had given money to both guys. You're my guy, here's a check. You're my guy, here's a check. Remember, Trump was open about that back in the day. He was like, look, I needed to build, I wanted my businesses to thrive. So I played nice with everybody on both sides.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Remember his wedding in 2005 with Melania? There's Bill and Hillary Clinton, and, you know, everyone's there kissing the ring.

• 53:52Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:54Tucker Carlson?

  Um, okay, so you go up to Andy Lack's office. Noah Oppenheimer's sitting there.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  You screen the tape and they say to you, Billy, what do you want to do about this? Yeah, what do you want to do about this? Like, do you want to get out? It's your problem. I mean, I, I, I could have done what the little minion who wants to save his butt. And I might have if I had been, if I wasn't so stupid or I didn't get what they were saying. In other words, they're saying, do you want to get out in front of it? What if I had taken that tape? And the most disingenuous little save my own ass move, I get on the air and I say, okay, look, yeah, I know this was recorded, you know, before the interview and it was off camera. It's an off mic thing and the whole thing and, you know, don't read into how bad that

• 54:40Speaker 01

  is as a journalist to be doing this, but because this is such a serious election and in the interest of all information and candor, I want to present this and I want you, the American people, to hear this because you're about to vote on the president of the United States. You should know this. And so it's just, these are extenuating circumstances and here I go. And I don't look good on this tape because I have to greet this, do this greeting at the end and it looks bad and, you know, but I really, it's important to me to do this. And then I put it out there for people. I might've been the, wow, Billy Bush is courageous by the media establishment. What a courageous guy. He had to do that. We'll give him a pass because look, he brought forward this beautiful thing that will take out the enemy.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Because he's screwing Trump. Because he's screwing Trump. And in the end, this is the very beginning of Trump derangement syndrome. It, no matter what, screwing Trump is paramount above everything else. Yes. So I would have gotten the pass from the media and then, and maybe still, you know, take a little vacation, but be back still at the Today Show, making lots and lots of money for, you know. But I said, no, no, it's wrong. I can't have people look at me that I've got to be, I'm not the guy that's doing that to anyone. Yeah. I know the state. And I know what you, how you want this election to turn out. I know how you want it to turn out, but I can't do that. I wouldn't do it to anyone.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  And they said, okay, we understand. And then they tried to get access Hollywood. Okay, why don't you guys do a little version of this and put it on? And then I made a huge mistake and I said to my executive producer, I said, Trump didn't know that this was on. Any other guest would not. I have no protectionism of Trump. I don't, you know, I'm whatever. It's just wrong. And they're setting you up. You're going to become the fall guy. Trump's going to sue NBC for putting this thing out there because he didn't know he was being recorded and you're the fall guy, you dummy, and they're going to fire you. And he went, oh, my God, you're right. So he called back Andy Lack and he said, no, I'm not putting it on Access Hollywood tonight.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  That was a Friday night. No, Thursday night. Remember that Sunday, the ninth, was the second presidential debate with Hillary Clinton. They needed this out there before the debate. So Anderson Cooper's first question could be about this sexual assault and Donald Trump perpetrating it.

• 57:10Tucker Carlson?

  This is insane. So wait, hold on. A little background context. You said this was the beginning of Trump derangement syndrome. Did you sense that at NBC?

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Oh, God, absolutely. I mean, anything. Remember this. Over at ABC News, they did at the same time when Trump became president, they launched a 70, they built a 75 person investigative unit. I know the guy who was head of it, dedicated to anything negative on Trump. Find stuff on him and get him out. This is not journalism. This is not news. It is activism.

• 57:48Tucker Carlson?

  That's crazy.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  When you're calling journalism, it's total activism.

• 57:52Tucker Carlson?

  What do you think that was?

• 57:54Speaker 01

  All the major networks. That's why, by the way, when NBC does the shitty thing that they did, ABC and CBS don't call it out. They don't say,

• 58:01Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  You know, hey, but you're competing with each other. I would want to pound my competitor.

• 58:05Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Like, look what you did. That was dirty because all of them would have done it too, probably. You know what I mean?

• 58:10Tucker Carlson?

  What do you think?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  They all shared that mission.

• 58:12Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, you know, even even at the You know, channel I worked at, which was the one conservative channel, you know, a lot of people hated Trump, really, really hated Trump. But you were in such an interesting spot because you knew him so well for so many years in a totally

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hosted eight pageants for him all over the world. I went with the Donald to Ecuador, to Bangkok, to Panama. As we try to take back the canal. I was with him all the time. I flew on his plane and hosted the Paley Center Panel on this incredible phenomenon, The Apprentice. And I, you know, Donald said, you can fly with me. And if we flew on the plane, I'd never seen Donald without a tie on. It was this night, rolled up sleeves, buttoned, you know, the white shirt unbuttoned, no tie. It was incredible. Never have I seen that. I didn't know what to make of it. I was like, he's so relaxed. This is weird. But he hung out and we told stories. We just, I had spent more time with him.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  I still think I've spent more time with him on camera than anyone.

• 59:15Tucker Carlson?

  I bet that's right.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 59:18Tucker Carlson?

  And I, I've spent a lot of time with Trump and I, I'll just, I'll just say it. I've enjoyed pretty much all of it. Fun guy to be with.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Wildly entertaining.

• 59:25Tucker Carlson?

  Wildly.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Wildly entertaining. And I have to tell you, one of the funniest people I have ever.

• 59:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  The laughter that I, I splitting my sides laughing at the things he would say. And some of it's because it's, he's almost like a caricature. You know, the third person speak and all that. It's just, it's wildly funny. So you don't really take much of it seriously. You know, when he said what he said at the end of the tape there, that I never for one second thought that that was a serious thing. I mean, who would say that? And I just, but you just laugh.

• 1:00:01Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, the funniest, I agree, the funniest, the funniest. I once took someone, I went to dinner with him and I brought someone who was, you know, politically on his side, I think, but was like, really Donald Trump? And at the end of the meal, this is probably got in the car with the person who goes, that's the greatest dinner I've ever had. I've never had a dinner like that in my life.

• 1:00:22Tucker Carlson?

  Anyway, but so given the fact, I think you actually have spent way more time on camera than anyone in the world with Donald Trump. So it just puts you, but again, as you've said, not in any kind of political context. So now you're working on the Today Show, biggest, biggest news show in the country, and-

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  They put out an APB to all properties. Find us something that show, because a woman who was a Miss Universe contestant, this is early end of September, had come forward and said, "He was disparaging towards me." And Trump said, "I've never been disparaging towards a woman in my life. I've never done anything like that." So then NBC said, "Okay, find something of, look at all your tapes, everybody, every division of anything he might have said disparaging about a woman, so we can prove him wrong. Ha, we got you." And then Rob Silverstein, my executive producer at, was like, "Oh, wait a minute. That tape that's collecting dust in my thing, he said something about Nancy Adele that was disparaging."

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Remember, this has always been about Nancy Adele. And so he takes the tape out and he's like, then he calls NBC to say, "Hey, I may have something. I could use it. I'm not sure. I need your legal approval, because although a very small division, it's a division of NBC News, Access Hollywood. So I need legal permission here. I don't want to go out there because I don't think he knows he's being recorded. I need a blessing." And then they sent it and from there they said, "Okay, we'll take it from here. Thank you so much."

• 1:01:54Tucker Carlson?

  What do you think that was? Why? I mean, it's just so especially strange for NBC, which as you've said a couple of times, was the recipient of like all this profit, a hundred million dollars a year from this show. So like, they love Trump, but they pivot so fast to hating Trump obsessively. Why?

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Well, 11 years, a lot can happen, like the bitter negotiations over the Miss Universe pageant and the fallout and lawsuits and counter suits and, you know, the, he, after he left The Apprentice, they replaced him at one point with, you know, they tried to replace him with Arnold Schwarzenegger and he denigrated them. Schwarzenegger's terrible. Those two hated each other. They fought, you know- Trump's a street fighter, he's the, he's the king of the concrete jungle.

• 1:02:42Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  You know, and so he's like, uh, the, once the apprentice had died, he blamed them for it and, you know, he fights, he fights dirty and they,

• 1:02:50Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  You know, and I think they had, you know, that big lawsuit over, over Miss Universe, kind of bummed them out and they, they ended up hating each other. It happens.

• 1:03:00Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  In some of, you know, uh, and so a falling out. And then when he decides to run later, now it's like, get him at all costs. And they want Hillary. They just,

• 1:03:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, they want Hillary, but you didn't see that.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  But with such vitriol for Trump?

• 1:03:21Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, it was cra- and it wasn't just NBC, it was everybody.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  But it was everybody.

• 1:03:25Tucker Carlson?

  Like what, what, but looking back eight years later, any idea why? It's not like Trump is super right wing or anything.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Well, back in the day, look, I'm gonna confess myself. I said, listen, I spent a lot of time with Trump. He'd be a terrible president. This is a crazy idea.

• 1:03:37Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  This is, and I said that on the air in 2015. On my live daytime show, I said, as a man who has spent probably the most amount of time, this is a terrible idea. Now, to be clear, you know, I'm the nephew of George H W Bush, you know, this is, uh, he was a real steward and by the book sort of guy, um, and felt, you know, he was a character first, all these things. Trump was something we'd never seen before.

• 1:04:07Tucker Carlson?

  Well, also he was, he was, since you brought it up, he was running against your cousin.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  And he's running against Jeb, low energy Jeb.

• 1:04:13Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Is what he called him.

• 1:04:14Tucker Carlson?

  So this puts you in like the weirdest position of anybody in the media.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. When he started saying the low energy thing, I was like, oh man, really? Donald, jeez. You're so brutal, but God, that works, doesn't it? Uh, what people misjudged was they were sick of everything that, the way things had been done and that he knew that. And that's why Trump is smart. Just cause he, he knows where people are and he met them there. So, you know, uh, genius in that regard.

• 1:04:51Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing, amazing story and you're, I hadn't really, this whole time I'm having the conversation and I sort of forgot that-

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  It's so much, there's so many crazy unbelievable details, right? But at the end of the day,

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  I think it's been handled. I think it's like they have had a moment with their conscience and realized you can't do this. This is a part of the recording, nobody knew was being recorded, you can't do that to someone, you can't do it to me as a journalist, to, you know, out somebody like that and you can't do it to someone like Donald who's going to sue you, so it's dead and they think, okay. And as soon as Access Hollywood said they're not doing it either, we're not touching this. NBC didn't want to touch it. They knew that Trump would sue them. They slid it to the Washington Post.

• 1:05:38Tucker Carlson?

  How'd they do that?

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  I'm on a plane. I'm on a plane that Friday, two days before the debate, I'm going home to Los Angeles, see my family. And right before the wheels go up, might look at my phone one last time and bang, there's the story in the Washington Post and I go, oh my God. And the next week is the most chaotic week-

• 1:05:59Tucker Carlson?

  Did you have cell service on the plane?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  I got wifi 15 minutes later and I had a million messages from Noah, you're gonna be fine, you're okay, don't worry, we'll take care of you. The head of communications at NBC, don't worry, you didn't do anything. You did nothing, we've got you, don't worry, we've got you. Security will be waiting for you at LAX, we have a car, a security guy will take you to the car, car will take you home. Don't worry, we've got you, we've got you. Next day, we've got you, we've got you.

• 1:06:26Tucker Carlson?

  Did your wife-

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Got me to the point-

• 1:06:27Tucker Carlson?

  Did your wife text you on the plane?

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Uh, my wife texted me and, and, and we had a dinner at a friend's house that night and they're like, hey, are we still on? And I'm like, yeah, of course, what do you mean, are we on? And they're like, this is sort of big, I think, I mean, it's kind of huge, it's kind of everywhere. And I'm like, no, no, they got me. We're good, they got me. Cause I didn't do anything. They got me. We land, TMZ, paparazzi, I get home-

• 1:06:49Tucker Carlson?

  That wait there waiting-

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  The next day I buy $5,000 worth of new suits, cause as much as they give you, pay you on the Today Show, they don't buy you clothing. And I'm like, I gotta get some new suits, I mean, I got a fancy new job, I'm an important little guy, this is great. I buy a bunch of suits, I have someone tailoring them in my living room, I'm doing all this- The next day, Sunday, I go out and there's a car and driver in the driveway. And as I'm about to open the door with my bags, the driver says, uh, hey, they just canceled the car. I said, what? Nah, it's gotta be a mistake. What are you talking about? No, they canceled the car.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  And I'm, oh God. I called my lawyer and said, what's going on? And he says, yeah, they wanna suspend you tomorrow. I said, I need to be able to talk tomorrow. I need to be able to say something. Can't suspend me. He's like, they're suspending you tomorrow. And then from there, just this shit unfolded and...

• 1:07:39Tucker Carlson?

  I, I think I did call you on Saturday and said they're gonna try and screw you.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  I think you did. As a man who's, knows what it looks like when it's coming.

• 1:07:48Tucker Carlson?

  I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. I said...

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Hey buddy, you're, uh, you're fucked.

• 1:07:53Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I did, I did say, I said, they're gonna try and fuck you. And you're like, no, no, no, I've been here a while. I've worked for this company.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  No, no, they love me. This is the network that raised me. No, no, no, they couldn't do that to me. I didn't do anything. I'm fine.

• 1:08:03Tucker Carlson?

  So my advice, I'll never forget it was, cause I still think it's good advice. March into Andy Lax's office and say, um, listen bitch, can I call you bitch? Uh, you may have some thought about destroying me. Um, and I'm a father of children, so you can't do that.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  I just didn't see it.

• 1:08:18Tucker Carlson?

  But if you do that, I will go on Good Morning America on Monday and we're gonna talk about your marital infidelity. Just, just so you know. No, no, no, because like you're not allowed to destroy me. So like, how about don't do that?

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  All your sexual harassment claims from everywhere you've ever been. Right? You who would later go on to fire, uh, you know, Matt Lauer and, uh, claim you knew nothing.

• 1:08:42Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:08:43Tucker Carlson?

  But so these are...

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  And by the way, Andy's landed at PBS apparently. He's producing a new series at PBS. Fire him.

• 1:08:52Tucker Carlson?

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• 1:10:47Tucker Carlson?

  We were talking about this off-air, just having spent, both of us, a lot of time in this business. The television executives are that rare group, and you don't run into them very often, who don't respond to anything but threats. Whereas like, you know, a normal person, your wife, your children, your friends, anybody off the street, the lady at Dunkin' Donuts, like, they can all be reasoned with and they're moved by love and, you know, a cogent argument. TV executives, it's like, if you don't have a gun in your hand, well, you just said you got the job because GMA was thinking of hiring you.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's leverage.

• 1:11:16Tucker Carlson?

  That's it. That's the only-

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  The only thing that moves-

• 1:11:19Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  The right thing will never be done.

• 1:11:21Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Someone else wants him? Alright, now we want him. Move it over to here. But that's, that's life. You know, the leverage, I get it.

• 1:11:31Tucker Carlson?

  God, it's not my life. That's not the world that I live in, outside of-

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  It's not the world. I'm leaving, you know, I wish I had the wherewithal then to know what was happening. It was so hot and so crazy and I had to hire a litigator and all these things and we ended up doing a deal with them to let me go and it was not my full contract and it was- And then the next day, there's reports that Billy Bush got all this money. It's not even half of what they reported. It's like, it was, it was a shit. I had bought a place in New York that I was-

• 1:12:07Tucker Carlson?

  I remember.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  I took a bath, I took a bath on that. I mean, you want a 360 shit show and it happened like that in an instant. You're at the highest you've ever been in your career. You can't believe it. You got drivers wherever you're going. You're like, dude, I'm maybe drinking a little bit of that Kool-Aid, thinking I'm pretty cool. And maybe, and here's the positive part. Maybe God said, "You're not ready for life yet. Amazingly, you're 44 years old and you don't know what a struggle looks like. You have had a pretty sheltered life." I'm looking, trying to think of it on a bigger picture. And you need, everyone in this life, no one goes unscathed.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Everyone has to get their doors blown off in some way. Hopefully, it's not cancer with a child or something, something terrible, but it's gonna be something- Horrible, that's gonna shake you to the core and you gotta figure it out. This was mine, I'm not extraordinary that I've had to deal with getting my doors blown off. I'm only extraordinary in the details of it, that the reality guy from 2005 is now destroying 16 other people to become the Republican candidate for president. That's all very extraordinary, but I think what happened then was three years of disaster and then getting back to work and slowly putting one foot after the other.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  And leading to, you know, this moment now where I'm.

• 1:13:36Tucker Carlson?

  It's, the whole thing is just absolutely incredible. Um, I watched with amazement and real sadness.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  And by the way, you, you were the, one of the very, very, very few people that, you know, just didn't give a shit and called it for what it was. You were, you.

• 1:13:51Tucker Carlson?

  Well, I was totally outraged by it and the lying behind it. And we talked about this off air, but if they were like, you know, what you said about Megyn Kelly, if they're like, okay, you know, it's not, the returns aren't what we thought they were gonna be. We're gonna have to let you go. That's a totally reasonable thing to do. If they had said Billy, we're just too embarrassed and like, let's work out some way or whatever. I don't, but they were like morally high-handed with you, like you committed some kind of crime. And I was outraged by that. What did you do wrong? I never understood it.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  And then this, and then the small, you know, then I was unhireable. I was just unhireable. I didn't work for three years.

• 1:14:26Tucker Carlson?

  I know, I know.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Three years is a long time. I didn't work, couldn't get hired. And I, and to my fault, what I should have done is launched the Tucker Carlson network right then and there.

• 1:14:36Tucker Carlson?

  The technology wasn't ready for it.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  It wasn't, I wasn't ready. I was like, no, damn it. This big family that had me in it is gonna have me back because it isn't right. And I'm gonna stick around until they do. And finally, I made it back, you know. Um, and Extra at Warner Brothers hired me. I've done it for five years. And I'll forever be grateful to the woman who lives very close to you down here since she's retired. Lisa G, who hired me and I got, you know, going again.

• 1:15:05Tucker Carlson?

  So, but can you, without, you know, getting too painful, but to sort of linger on what those, those days, you, you, you walk outside and the driver tells you that the car's been. Uh, canceled. So you call your lawyer. Did you call Noah Oppenheim and he lacked?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I called Noah and I mean, and you know, the, at that point, everything goes to the lawyers. You, their, their phones no longer answer. So they had, they're told by legal, you cannot talk to him at all. And so.

• 1:15:35Tucker Carlson?

  Was you never had another time?

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Six months later, I talked to, uh, Noah Oppenheim.

• 1:15:40Tucker Carlson?

  But you never talked to him there in the middle of it?

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  He said, Noah, there's a beautiful thing. Noah said to me, if you, if you never speak to me again, if you hate my guts for the rest of your life, I understand. I'm so sorry. I, I, I, I, it wasn't supposed to happen like this. I am so sorry.

• 1:15:55Tucker Carlson?

  Well, I called Noah because I know Noah and I was, I probably shouldn't say this, but I did. And I called him. He called me back. Um, I was in the car with one of my children coming back from a college tour. I'll never forget it. And she was driving. She was just wanting to drive because she's going to boarding school. She didn't know how to drive. Anyway, we're in the car. He calls me back on speaker and I, she reminded me of this. Actually, last night when we're saying you were coming, um, and I lost, completely lost control on him, like completely lost control. Scared my daughter because I was just so, I mean, I've got nothing to do with it, but I just, I was just so mad.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Tucker Carlson?

  That someone could do, well, I felt it like it's just so unfair. And then you don't call the man directly and it's, oh, through the lawyers, legal won't let me. It's like, what?

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Tucker Carlson?

  You suspend all humanity and decency because you work for some stupid company? It's going to be gone in 10 years. There won't be an NBC. Like all of this is passing away. All of this is fake and what matters is treating other people with decency and they just forget that.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  There's a history of that at the Today Show. If I were still the host of Access Hollywood and all of that had happened, and I had never spent two months at the Today Show, I hadn't made that very recent move. I, I don't think they would have fired me at Access. I think I, I, I kind of, I was the Matt Lauer of the place. It's a smaller place, but I'd been there so long. People looked up to me. I kind of had influence. I could, they wouldn't have done it. They needed me. But remember, I'd gotten to the Today Show where half the place didn't want me there in the first place.

• 1:17:15Tucker Carlson?

  That's right.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  So it was definitely inside politics.

• 1:17:17Tucker Carlson?

  So it was Matt.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Mean Girls, high school shit.

• 1:17:19Tucker Carlson?

  And now, I mean, things, it's so long ago and things have changed so much.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:17:24Tucker Carlson?

  That I kind of feel sorry for Matt Lauer, who at the time I was outraged.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  And I laid into him, by the way, I got to speak to Matt Lauer nine months afterwards, and he and I said, you know.

• 1:17:31Tucker Carlson?

  Had he fallen yet?

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  He had not fallen yet, but he called me with some bullshit about, I can't believe that Trump is president and you lost your job, which is the number one thing I hear from everyone, but I was like, not from you asshole. And I laid into him. And I laid, please don't try that on me. I'm not dumb. I mean, you're the leader, I said, you're the leader of that place, you could have fought for me and you didn't, and I know why you didn't. Cause you didn't want me and my full head of hair in that building and.

• 1:17:58Tucker Carlson?

  (laughing).

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  I get it. I laid, he's like, no, no, no, I fought for you privately. I'm like, no, you didn't, dude. I know you didn't. And your minions didn't. And shut up and save it. And then when he got fired, I was like, hey, are you okay? Here's some books, try these three books.

• 1:18:15Tucker Carlson?

  I did the same. I also texted him. I never liked him, but I always, I always text people when they get fired, just because I feel like we should do that.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  We should. You don't want to.

• 1:18:24Tucker Carlson?

  I texted Jeff Zucker when he got fired.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  You did?

• 1:18:28Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, and you know, the funny thing is, um, yeah, I really disliked Jeff Zucker intensely. I worked for him and I intensely disliked him.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  I like the way you say intensely.

• 1:18:37Tucker Carlson?

  I did, and he got fired and I was in bed, I was in the morning, and someone said, Zucker just got fired, and I texted him immediately. It was a two liner, you know, cause been there, and uh, never heard back from him, this was four years ago, probably three or four years ago, and I was at a lunch in Abu Dhabi last week, and guess who sat next to me? Jeff Zucker.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  Wait, he didn't choose to sit.

• 1:18:59Tucker Carlson?

  No, he just rounded.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  Wait, his placard, his nameplate was next to you.

• 1:19:03Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, I sit down at lunch and.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  In an official capacity, this is some type of event.

• 1:19:09Tucker Carlson?

  It was, yeah, I was just traveling and.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  He didn't know he was sitting next to him.

• 1:19:12Tucker Carlson?

  No, I wind up sitting at lunch, there's Jeff Zucker. And the first thing he says to me is.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  Thanks for your text.

• 1:19:18Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. It's the first thing he said.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  People remember these things.

• 1:19:22Tucker Carlson?

  They do remember them.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Always reach out. Someone's down, always reach out.

• 1:19:26Tucker Carlson?

  That is, can you say that again? Cause that's the truest thing in life.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Whether, like, someone gets diagnosed with a disease or something, you're like, oh my god, I don't know what to do, maybe I'll do nothing. If they get fired or something like that, always reach out. Always.

• 1:19:39Tucker Carlson?

  That is.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  And I can tell you that from a guy. I had, when I got canned, I had beautiful letters. Julie Bowen reached out, uh, you know.

• 1:19:47Tucker Carlson?

  We also went to high school with.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  She was, we went to high school with, you're like, God, did I have a crush on her?

• 1:19:51Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  Jeez. Uh, but Suzanne Somers and, and Cindy Crawford and, uh, crazy Dennis Quaid and, it goes on, but there's many, many, lots and lots of letters.

• 1:20:04Tucker Carlson?

  It's funny you remember it all, though.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Kate Walsh, the actress, and, uh, oh, you're, you're, we know who you are. You're the greatest guy. I'm so sorry. It's like, oh.

• 1:20:14Tucker Carlson?

  Always reach out.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Always reach out.

• 1:20:16Tucker Carlson?

  So you texted Matt Lauer when he, boy, talk about a fall, too. I mean, that was, Matt Lauer had one of the nicest, most impressive wives ever.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Tucker Carlson?

  And an amazing person.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, very sweet.

• 1:20:29Tucker Carlson?

  Um, very smart. But, uh, what, did he respond when you texted him?

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:20:35Tucker Carlson?

  Have you seen him?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  And then afterwards, we, you know, I chatted with him once and I haven't talked to him in years, but, um, you know. You know, I think one thing, there was this funny thing that happened in, in Rio, like when we got back from Rio and the Olympics, all these people were writing these stories, like In Touch Weekly, gossip magazines were writing Billy Bush wants Matt Lauer's job and he's got in for it. And this is just stuff that in no way is true because I'm trying to build a nine o'clock Regis style show. We were gonna do it at the top of the rock, the top of the building with like a jazz quartet, like a morning live audience. It was gonna, we had all these wonderful plans. It was gonna be the most amazing show. Uh, so we're like, I don't, I don't want your job. But he read all these things and he thought that

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  I was planting them through my quote unquote team, whoever would be on my, I'm just a kid that came from Access Hollywood. So.

• 1:21:30Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, you didn't have a team?

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my team. So he called me to his office. This is while I was like, this is after my first month. I'm still there. And he's like, hey, I need to talk to you. These, you know, reports that have come out, like you want my job and all this stuff and all these things that started in Rio and all this. I need you to, uh, I need you to know that they have to stop and they gotta stop now. And I went, oh my God, are you, are you a crazy person? Have you been in this business and you're so psychotic and it's gotten you to the point where you think I'm planting stories to get rid of you so I can have the number one chair? Oh my God, like, do people do that? Like, I'm just, I just want you to like me, dude. I just want you to take me out to lunch and say, welcome. Yeah.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Like I have to every new person that arrives to a show that I'm the anchor of. Of course. Of course, welcome.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Did Roker ever confront you directly? Confront me about anything? Oh, I mean, he's just like attacking me. Well, he attacked me on air about the Ryan Lochte thing and after that it kinda, it brushed away and, you know, Roker's, it was very difficult to deal with in that you just have to, kid gloves, you know what I mean? Yeah. Walk on. Did you ever talk to him again? He left me several voicemails. I still have them, by the way. Really? An Al Roker voicemail. Hey, Bushman, I'm coming to town, just, you know, feeling so good that you're fired. I mean, not really, but like, I'm so glad you're not here, so now I can like you again. I just can't like you here. It's too close to my stuff.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  I was looked at as a predator by the men. I will say this, the women on the show, terrific, delightful. Really? We had the best time. Hoda Kotb would put her arm around me and say, Bushman, you and I are the future. And it turns out Bush and Kotb are the future, just not this Bush.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I mean, the women were great. Totally forgot. Two separate worlds of the Today Show, seven to nine. Wait, they hired another, I totally forgot that. Oh, yeah, that's the, da dum dum, but.

• 1:23:45Tucker Carlson?

  Wow, I'm I I have trouble connecting dots sometimes.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but look, here's what happens. This all leads. This leads to.

• 1:23:54Tucker Carlson?

  Hilarious. Yeah, literally. Never thought of that till right now.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Neither have I.

• 1:24:00Tucker Carlson?

  What's it like? Uh, in, I mean. So, do you ever talk to her about it?

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:24:06Tucker Carlson?

  Your cousin.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jenna. Uh, no, uh, not. Yes, we talked once at my bar at Barbara Bush's funeral in Houston. About it. But I remember when I was coming in. Um, or making my moves and things were going really well for me and I was making that move to the Today Show. She was like, how do I like they just keep having me do the same things? How do I get out of this? And I gave her some advice and. You know, I said, well, just stop interviewing your dad. Like every week, don't do that. Um, that's a start. And then, but she's, um, done incredibly well and and. She, you know, I love her and she terrible situation for her to be in. While they're, you know. Totally. Defenestrating your. Cousin.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  And you move up.

• 1:24:55Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, that is.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Poor thing. I mean, I mean, I felt I felt as badly for her because it's just, you know. It's just awkward. She didn't want it that way.

• 1:25:04Tucker Carlson?

  Of course not. Of course not. Wow. Also.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  And we have great fun today. I mean, I saw her recently and I we always have laughs and everything's. Wonderful. I and recently ran into Phil Griffin.

• 1:25:16Tucker Carlson?

  No way.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  MSNBC. Who I thought, I thought he was behind all this and I was ready to lay into him. And I started to. And he was like, no. No, the man that fired you, I hate him too.

• 1:25:29Tucker Carlson?

  Lack.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody hates lack. The one thing everyone agrees on is that Andy Lack is a very bad guy.

• 1:25:36Tucker Carlson?

  You know, it's funny. Phil Griffin fired me. And it's one of the very, maybe the only firing, I've had a lot of firings, but it was the only one where I had no hard feelings whatsoever.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:45Tucker Carlson?

  And he called me in at Thanksgiving, I'll never forget it. And I was about to take the train back to Washington. He goes, hey, can I talk to you for a sec, buddy? Called everyone buddy.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Buddy.

• 1:25:54Tucker Carlson?

  Probably still does. And he goes, um, hey, uh, you know, we hired you here at MSNBC. We were hoping to move the channel right to compete with Fox. That didn't work. Um, and then you brought in Rachel Maddow onto your show. And it turns out she's way more popular with her audience than you. So we're gonna let you go, uh, cause it didn't work. And, but we'll pay out your contract and it's totally fine. And he was so direct with me and honest with me. Those, that's exactly what, I mean, first he started, he was like attacking me in the New York Post, page six, and I called him up and I yelled at him.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Do we have to do it this way?

• 1:26:28Tucker Carlson?

  We have to do it this way.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  News people have to do it this way.

• 1:26:31Tucker Carlson?

  They have to.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  They have to use the gossip pages in New York.

• 1:26:34Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  It's so sad.

• 1:26:35Tucker Carlson?

  To crush you and whatever. But once I called him on that and he stopped, um, he was totally honorable about it.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:26:44Tucker Carlson?

  And, you know, I obviously don't like or approve of MSNBC, but I've never attacked Phil Griffin because he paid me the honor of directness.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:26:55Tucker Carlson?

  Me too.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  What he said to me in June was when I was coming after, I wanted to corner him. He said, uh, he said, no, I asked Andy, hey, you know, you've helped, yeah, what's his name, Brian Williams before, like you, you've, you stand up for people that we like. And Billy Bush is a good guy. Like, what are you gonna do about Billy? And Andy said to him, he told me, fuck Billy Bush. Who gives a shit? Who cares? Billy Bush, what? Doesn't matter, he's nothing. Forget him. And so literally just, and I thought, oh my God.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  But it endorsed that everybody agrees that Andy Lack is a terrible guy. My dad called two people on my behalf. My father, bless his heart, you called Noah Oppenheim? My dad called Andy Lack and he's like a really in high integrity, clean fighting guy. He only tells clean jokes like, you know, calls up and says, uh, he says, Andy, I don't know if you know this. He, no, he wrote him a letter. He says, I've recently had a case of the shingles. I don't know if you've had a case of the shingles before, but they're very, very painful. And I, I just hope that one befalls you soon. Something, you're a horrible, you're a horrible person. Jonathan Bush, he's since died three years ago.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  But then he also called Steve Burke because back in the day dad knew his, his father, not well, but his father was Dan Burke, who ran Cap City's ABC. So Steve Burke, who was the CEO and chairman of NBC at the time, dad called him and said, there's no way this apple could have fallen far from the tree. You're, what you're doing to my son is unbelievable. It's a character, so you're killing this guy. And he didn't do anything and shame on you. There's no way the apple fell that far from the tree. Your dad was an honorable, honorable man. And he was like, I'm so sorry. I don't know, I don't know what to do. I'm, you know, it's just out of my hands. I'm sorry, so sorry. And I was like, that was it.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  But of the people, always reach out when someone's down and always call to tell someone an asshole, that they're an asshole when they are.

• 1:29:02Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:29:03Tucker Carlson?

  But be direct. I think that's, that's.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  Be direct.

• 1:29:05Tucker Carlson?

  And that's why you'll never hear me attack Phil Griffin, even though.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Right? Good. And me neither, cause I, it like cleared, I wanted to like him so much. And then I was like, but he, I remember his face like walking out of Andy Lack's office. When the plan was in motion to fire me, MSNBC was never first on the air with a story. And they were first on the air with the bust story, cause they knew it was coming.

• 1:29:28Tucker Carlson?

  It was a setup.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  They had colluded.

• 1:29:30Tucker Carlson?

  So just one detail that I lighted over, which is how it got from the vaults at NBC News to the Washington Post. Who did it go to?

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  We don't know exactly, but if you want to begin the internal investigation, Noah Oppenheim is the president of, of NBC. He's the head of the, he's general manager of the Today Show. His co-editor of the Harvard Crimson Newspaper, back when he was a Harvard man.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  Uh, was a writer named David Farenholz from the Washington Post and Farenholz is the one they they ran the Crimson together. They were uh both groomsmen in Hillary in Chelsea Clinton's wedding.

• 1:30:12Tucker Carlson?

  Actually?

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Co groomsmen. Oh yeah, cuz one of their other buddies was the guy that Chelsea married. So they were groomsmen in the wedding together. Anyway, that guy's the one who released. It's like the paper trail is terrible. I mean, I could start there.

• 1:30:24Tucker Carlson?

  So the college buddy of the NBC president.

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  Is now a writer at Washington Post and then two years later or a year and a half later, he gets his own NBC News contributing gig and he gets a sweet gig over at MSNBC. So they they pay him back for the for the hustle is what that's where I would start the investigation. I'm not saying that that happened, but I would begin there and just see if it saves you some time. I don't know.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Now, I can guarantee you that here's the good thing about Noah, that Noah didn't want to do this. I'm his only hire. He was new on the job and he made one move. I'm gonna change that third hour. I'm putting Billy Bush in there. He's got personality. That's the guy we want. Boom. He makes his one hire. Then this thing blows up on him and Lack, no question, turns to him and says, get this tape to a out into the world. Find a way to do it. And he did not want to, but this was the obvious way. So, you know, his only choice was to say, no, Andy, I'm not gonna do that. It's wrong. I hired the guy and we shouldn't do that to him. But he didn't.

• 1:31:30Tucker Carlson?

  What happened to Andy Lack?

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Andy eventually got fired. He every to be fair, everyone who was involved in all of this has all since been fired.

• 1:31:39Tucker Carlson?

  This is.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Everyone's been fired.

• 1:31:41Tucker Carlson?

  This is like the Soviet Union where, you know, all the early Bolsheviks commit these mass murders.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  It's not worth it, folks.

• 1:31:47Tucker Carlson?

  Then they're all killed.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:31:50Tucker Carlson?

  Kamenov, Zinoviev, Trotsky, all die.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  But Lack is now, I've been told, uh, at PBS somewhere producing some series.

• 1:31:56Tucker Carlson?

  Why was he fired from NBC?

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  Uh, just one bungle after the next. He but the Me Too thing came along, Me Too movement came and and and the the Harvey Weinstein thing he bungled and then he bungled the Brian Williams, that that disaster and then the Matt Lauer disaster. And I think at the end, at the end of the day, they're just like, this is not a good guy.

• 1:32:17Tucker Carlson?

  Was Brian Williams on your?

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  And he wasn't, he never, he never reached out. I mean, I mean, I, I like Brian. Um, yeah, I have no reason not to. Uh, I always had fun with, uh, Tom Brokaw was on the same floor as me where my office was. Craig Melvin was right next to me. Loved Craig. Craig came up to me at a country club. I was having lunch with an old agent of mine out in Weyton. I went out there to, uh, have lunch with an old agent who was, who was in kind of in poor health. So just went to see him. And I ran into Craig and his wife and their kids in the parking lot. And he said, I'm so sorry. What happened to you? Like this is, you were such a good guy and I just, it's terrible.

• 1:33:00Tucker Carlson?

  Is he still there?

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  He just got the big promotion. He's in the lower chair.

• 1:33:05Tucker Carlson?

  Oh.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Maybe he planned this whole day. He took us a long plan, Greg. That's an eight year plan. No. Great guy, lovely, uh, decent singing voice and, um.

• 1:33:16Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing. So the, the people you know, you still must know people in linear television at the Today Show or other places. How, how are they feeling about the prospects of their?

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  There's a few, there's like a few big contracts left, but they're all shrinking. Like Stephanopoulos just renegotiated to come down. Everyone's coming down. They're all coming down to earth. Hoda left, but the, there's still plenty of 20, 25 million dollar a year people, like everyone on Good Morning America. Uh, but they're, all their renegotiations come down. The whole thing is slowly, the low is for the next five, 10 years, I think there'll be a place for the, for that morning TV, right? But, but not at these astronomical.

• 1:33:57Tucker Carlson?

  It doesn't feel like it drives anything anymore.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Well, it's so scared. It doesn't take an opinion. It doesn't take a position. It doesn't, it's, it's, it's the competi-, they're not, the Today Show and Good Morning America are not competing to win or to grow. It's who can die the slowest.

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  That's the fight.

• 1:34:19Tucker Carlson?

  But it doesn't, I mean, it used to be for decades, you know, if it appeared in the first hour of the Today Show, it kind of defined the news.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Seven thirty-five AM was known as the, the money slot. Whatever, whatever airs, it's still to this day, whatever airs at seven thirty-five, folks, that's the best thing they got. And after that, you can move on.

• 1:34:38Tucker Carlson?

  But it doesn't seem like it, like determines what people are talking about at eight thirty-five anymore.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:34:44Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  No, the internet is, is.

• 1:34:47Tucker Carlson?

  Just ate it.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Ate, eating, destroying everyone. It's an insatiable belly. It can't get enough.

• 1:34:53Tucker Carlson?

  So what'd you do after, so you get canned, and then what happens?

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  So I get canned and my life falls apart and I start drinking heavily. And I, I, I pathetically cry and cry and cry and, and, and, and I can't get, I just have like anxiety and panic and I end up going to this place called the Hoffman Process. The day that Donald Trump walked in for his first day of work as President of the United States was the day that I walked in, turned in my phone and checked in for nine days in a mental health retreat for, because I couldn't, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't, the

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  panic and the anxiety was just, cancellation, like at that level is, it's, it's severe. The mental toll, you know, we're fortified now, nothing could happen like that again to me. I had to learn the hard way and I was maybe especially weak at the time, so far, so, so far from Marcus Aurelius that I couldn't handle that, but I wanted to, I had suicidal ideation, I had like, I was on a balcony in this place I was renting and I was like, and I had to lay down on the ground because I felt myself like wanting to go to just get away from, I had paparazzi everywhere outside following me, saying shit to me and...

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  And I just got so bad that I went to this place and that was my first, that was in January of seventeen and that was my first step in, in putting myself together. I walked on the flames with Tony Robbins. I read every book you could read. I started, you know, yoga. I, you know, I found this amazing pastor who became my friend. I have this wonderful photo of me in church at this church, Zoe Church in, in Los Angeles, Pastor Chad Veach, a really great guy. And he, I didn't know he was doing it. I mean, he said, everybody, he said a prayer for me out loud and everyone in the congregation reached forward and put their hand on my shoulders. I like fell apart crying and I was like, okay,

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna put myself back together. I'm, I'm, this is, we'll fortify here. And then you just one step after the next and step after the next and, and then you get going and life gets better. I didn't think it, I, I, it would, but it's like, now it's about to get much better as I follow great pioneers like you and Megan and, and, and others and do things my way.

• 1:37:30Tucker Carlson?

  Been fired, yeah. Yeah. It's, so, look, you know, I mean, it's probably hard even to think of it, but I wonder if like, when you're seventy, you won't think, you know, it's probably, it wasn't all bad, that experience.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  I think that's right. People will say to you when you're having, in the, in the shittiest time of your life, they'll say, it's all gonna work out in the end. It's all gonna be a reason. It's all, believe me, once you get through it, life will never be, and I think there's truth to that. You just gotta get to the other side. I wasn't ready for anything bad to happen to me and now I'm ready for whatever comes next.

• 1:38:09Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  I really am. I'm, I'm very, I'm not an-

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  I can handle it, whatever it is, I can handle it. And also, to go and do the show that I'm about to go do on my own, I think it's helpful to know what it feels like to be down. No matter who you're talking to, if you're a professional communicator, to know what it feels like to be down is a really important tool.

• 1:38:39Tucker Carlson?

  I strongly agree with that.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:41Tucker Carlson?

  I also think I've noticed, certainly noticed it in my own life, that success isn't necessarily great for men, and especially men. And it does, you do get filled with hubris, actually.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Tucker Carlson?

  And you-

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought I was a cool guy, like, too-

• 1:38:55Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I've been there, I've been there. I'm not mocking you in any way, because I've certainly been there. And, in fact, I've been there so much that when I got fired the last time, Suzie, my wife, she was like thrilled I got fired, absolutely thrilled. She didn't like the employer, anyway. She thought that they were-

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 1:39:12Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, no, she was thrilled, she was actually walking the dogs. And I called her, and I was like, I just got fired. And she goes, why? I said, I don't know, they didn't tell me. She goes, I'm so glad.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I love you so much, Suzie. Oh, that's great.

• 1:39:24Tucker Carlson?

  She's like, but it's-

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  She's the best.

• 1:39:25Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, but I, and she never said it, or would say it, but I do think she, on a gut level, understood. It's like, it's important for a man to have setbacks once in a while, because it, it reminds you what's important. And these are all cliches for a reason, but it reminds you that you're not God, and you need to know that. That's really important to know that.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if life was just one rosy contract after the next, and look at me, look at me, what kind of textured life would that be? You have, you can't come back and triumph over something if you've got nothing to triumph over. So that's just the way life is, right?

• 1:39:58Tucker Carlson?

  Well, you look at Lauer and Roker, and they're hardly alone in this, but they're like legitimately successful people in television. I mean, they're the most successful people in television.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  Very, very rich, and a long run.

• 1:40:09Tucker Carlson?

  And very long run. Lauer's run, unbelievable, Roker's even longer.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  By the way, take me out, but not after two months. How about after 20 years? When I'm sitting on a giant pile of money.

• 1:40:19Tucker Carlson?

  Right, when you pay off the mortgage. But, but why are they so unhappy? I've wondered this, I got into TV in 1995, since 30 years, I've always noticed that, that the most successful people are like miserable. Someone yesterday told me, knows Larry Fink, who's like one of the richest people in the world, runs BlackRock. He said Larry Fink, really smart, you know, complicated person, not all bad, but the marker, the distinguishing characteristic of Larry Fink is he's miserable. He's truly unhappy. What is that? Why are so many very successful people miserable?

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  I don't know, but I, I do know that I don't want to be a billionaire. I'm not interested in it. No, thanks.

• 1:41:00Tucker Carlson?

  Amen.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  I want to have enough to do the things, you know, that, that, that I want, I want to be able to go skiing once in a while. Because there's, I mean, not to say more money, more problems, but I, it's, it's a drug like anything else. Keep taking it, keep taking me more, give me more, give me more. It's never going to satisfy. It's just never going to satisfy. What I want is,

• 1:41:20Tucker Carlson?

  You've seen that.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  I'm not doing what I'm doing. I'm not launching my new show to become rich on my own and make a lot of money. I want to be stimulated. I want to have conversations like this. I want to look at you and be honest with you and, and talk to every person I talk to in a completely honest, authentic, funny way. And I don't, the truth isn't going to appeal to everyone, but the truth matters.

• 1:41:46Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  I care more about that. I care about being stimulated every day. And if we do well, that's awesome.

• 1:41:54Tucker Carlson?

  So it sounds like the, just in, you're telling the three years of not working were, it's not good not to work.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  It's not good not to work. You gotta get up and have someplace to go. That's, you, you need to have something you're doing.

• 1:42:07Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Uh, and not, you know, I just kept thinking, how could they betray? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, how could they betray me like this? Oh, I couldn't get out of my own way. I was like just so mad. My brother said something beautiful. He said, when you get over all this, you're gonna get over it. And when you do, you're gonna get the opportunity to come back as yourself.

• 1:42:25Tucker Carlson?

  Well, your brother, speaking of getting screwed, totally different line of work.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  He got screwed. He knows what it feels like to have an activist, activist investor throw you out of the company you built.

• 1:42:36Tucker Carlson?

  And I talked to him the other day about something random and uh, sounded totally happy in it.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Totally. Now, he's overcome that. And you know what he did? He launched, he started another one.

• 1:42:47Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's got his, a new healthcare company called Zeus Health. So he started Athena, and Zeus is the father of Athena. So he's reminding everyone.

• 1:42:55Tucker Carlson?

  It's also A to Z.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, A to Z.

• 1:42:59Tucker Carlson?

  How did you get over that? How did you forgive? Cause you actually, I think it's fair to say, at this point, and we're almost two hours in, and anyone who's followed this, I think would agree you did get shafted. How did you forgive?

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  Because, well, my executive producer, who sent the tape, he was only looking to cover his ass in case he used it and they, and Trump sued. So I, I, when I really thought about it, I'm like, he wasn't, he was trying to cover himself. He wasn't trying to hurt me. It ended up really hurting me, but he didn't mean to. And the good times that I've had with him far outweigh the bad. We've traveled all over the world, to Olympics and all these different things, and covered so many things together. And we really work well together. So we healed the friendship. And now he's gonna be the producer of my new show, and we're back together again.

• 1:43:45Tucker Carlson?

  That's amazing.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  Am I a big person or what? I mean, come on.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  That little shit, and I, but, but I, I, I love him and, um, and now he works for me and I don't work for him. So, uh,

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  uh, but with Noah, I knew that Noah was just doing what they told him to do, and he didn't have, he just arrived to this giant machine, and he didn't have the guts to say no.

• 1:44:09Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  That we're doing the right thing. I'm not doing that. Most people would have done what he did. Most.

• 1:44:16Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, that's right.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  Takes a really big person of character to not do that. So I forgave him.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  And

• 1:44:22Tucker Carlson?

  What's he doing now?

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  The only one I don't forgive is Andy, and I could if he came to me and asked for it. But he doesn't return, you know, he's just a, he's just a shit. I tried calling him once and... So I'm fine not forgiving him. Like, I'm fine, like, I can, like, I'm not, my soul won't rot if I can just live and hate one person, right?

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  It's just one, Tucker, it's just one.

• 1:44:43Tucker Carlson?

  You may, look, I'm no theologian, but I think you, it's possible you get the anti-Lack exemption. I don't know.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just, I kinda like hating him anyway.

• 1:44:52Tucker Carlson?

  And what's, so what's Noah Oppenheimer doing now?

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:44:56Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:44:57Tucker Carlson?

  I'm gonna rush to, yeah, let's call him. Billy Bush, that was, um, thank you for doing this.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Okay. Now, will you tell people to tune into my new show?

• 1:45:05Tucker Carlson?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  January 13th is Monday, we begin, and guess what the name of the show is? Just to bring everything A to Z. Hot Mics with Billy Bush. The mics are still hot, except for, we know they are.

• 1:45:22Tucker Carlson?

  Where are you, where are you doing it from?

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Uh, I got a great little studio over by, uh, that Howie Mandel, uh, a little corner of Howie Mandel's operation, um, that he set up for me, and then ultimately we'll build out our-

• 1:45:35Tucker Carlson?

  In, in Los Angeles?

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  In Los Angeles. While we're doing that, uh, we'll build, uh, our own.

• 1:45:41Tucker Carlson?

  So, how long, so it's been your whole life you've worked for companies?

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I work for myself now. And the Hot Mics is like, uh, it's, it's the zeitgeist in sports, politics, entertainment, um, pop culture, just everything that's happening in the, in, that's hot.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I'm really excited, really got a great team of people. I'm learning this incredible world that you know so well.

• 1:46:05Tucker Carlson?

  No makeup required, did you know that?

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  I don't need any makeup.

• 1:46:08Tucker Carlson?

  Right, but I'm saying you-

• 1:46:11Tucker Carlson?

  You for makeup your whole-

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  You, you look the same, you have no gray hair. What are you doing? Do you do rinse out? Do you do a little rinse out?

• 1:46:18Tucker Carlson?

  I, I actually honestly wash my hair with Dr. Bronner's bar soap, so, um, and I shave with it, and I use no products whatsoever. And I am Scandinavian, which helps, uh, but-

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  And I compliment you as a man of good hair. Your hair is fantastic. And hair, two, the Hair Hall of Fame, we have a shot.

• 1:46:36Tucker Carlson?

  There you go. I have a picture of us in high school, same hair.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  Big hair.

• 1:46:41Tucker Carlson?

  Big hair. Um, it was bigger, it was bigger than the eighties.

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:44Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  You were an animal, man. This guy, what a, this is, you got, you got yourself going on the right path.

• 1:46:50Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. Well, that was, that was wonderful. Thank you.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you so much.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson Show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made, the complete library, tuckercarlson.com.