Billy Bush said on the "Hang Out with Sean Hannity" podcast that ABC News had a 75-person division devoted to getting Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. Bush said he knew the man who ran the division, though he could not identify him by name, and suggested that person no longer works at the network.
Bush said the effort fit a pattern he has seen for years. “This was it! This was – there has always been an 'it' to get Trump, but this was definitely it at the time,” he said, adding that the division was “dedicated to basically getting him.” ABC News did not immediately respond to Digital's request for comment.
The comments come from someone who was swept up in the Access Hollywood tape that nearly derailed Trump's first presidential campaign. Bush said he understood what then chairman Andy Lack wanted to do with that footage and why it could be used, because the release came ahead of a Sunday night debate and Anderson Cooper asked the first question in the second debate with Hillary Clinton and Trump.
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“I mean, I chit-chat with Sean Hannity, you know, 15 minutes before we sit down for an interview. The camera happens to be rolling. Whatever we talk about is not usable... that can't be [weaponized] but this was a special circumstance because of who was running and how they felt about him,” Bush said. He also said, “Look, it's wrong. I understand that you've got something here that you think is relevant, but it's wrong.”
The remarks land against a longer, and increasingly costly, fight between ABC News and Trump. In 2017, the network was forced to retract a report by Brian Ross that falsely claimed fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn would testify that Trump had ordered him to contact Russians about foreign policy while he was still a candidate. Ross later left ABC News after the false report. Then in 2024, Trump sued over comments made by a “This Week” anchor, and ABC News paid him a $16 million settlement in December 2024, weeks before he was sworn into office for a second term.
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That history makes Bush's accusation more than a throwaway podcast remark. It is a direct claim that one of the country's biggest newsrooms once organized a large internal effort around Trump, and it lands at a moment when the network is still answering for prior coverage that ended in retractions, a forced exit and a multimillion-dollar settlement. Bush's answer to the question it raises is blunt: in his view, the drive to get Trump was real, organized and already in motion by 2016.
