The Tape Of Billy Bush And Trump Was Reportedly Leaked By Someone From “The Today Show”
About a month before the election happened, The Washington Post mysteriously got their hands on a copy of a video of Donald Trump bragging about pussy grabbin’ with Billy Bush on a bus during the filming of an Access Hollywood segment. At the time, it seemed like someone wanted to make Trump look even sleazier than he already does. But Page Six says that the intention was to also make Billy Bush look bad.
Multiple sources say that the video was leaked by an NBC News staff member of the Today show. Access Hollywood was trying to sanitize some of the more gag-making parts of the tape before they released it and NBC’s news devision thought they were taking too long, so they leaked it themselves. Staffers at NBC News allegedly wanted to mess up Trump’s campaign, but they also wanted to punish Billy. Billy didn’t let NBC News know about the tape’s existence when he got hired on Today, but he later reportedly LOL’ed about it at a party in Rio during the Olympics. NBC was pissed that Billy violated his morality clause. One source claims he wasn’t liked by people at Today (no duh), but especially by Matt Lauer, who reportedly wanted Billy’s “frat boy” ass thrown out. Is “Matt Lauer” code for Al Roker?
As we now all know, the tape didn’t really hurt Trump, but it did get Billy fired from Today. A source says:
“The leak was not just a political move. Lauer felt threatened. The leaked tape served a dual purpose: It helped get Bush out of the way and NBC thought it would derail Trump. All it did was crush Billy, and, ironically, his own network was behind it.”
The source goes on to say that the person who leaked the tape is still at NBC News and has not been disciplined. They add that there was no internal investigation into the leak, as the tape “served their purposes.”
However, another Today source says it didn’t come from anyone in the Today family. They claim the leaker is someone from the west coast who hated Billy. I just pictured Mario Lopez in a trench coat and sunglasses holding a manila envelope that says SECRET TAPE in a dark corner of an underground parking lot.
Some other sources at Today are side-eyeing the thing about Matt hating Billy, and say that they had a “great relationship.” Matt Lauer himself tells Page Six: “This story is a complete fantasy, patently false.” Here’s my theory: Matt, Al, and the rest of the Today gang dug those terrifying Peanuts costumes from Halloween 2015 out of storage and leaked the video in disguise. That way, everyone could technically be telling the truth when they denied they had anything to do with it. I’m sure if you ask The Washington Post who contacted them about the video, they’ll be like “Matt Lauer? No. But I did receive an email from a Lucy van Pelt.”
Pic: Today/NBC