NBC timed the Access Hollywood tape to drop two days before Trump's debate with Hillary Clinton.
That wasn't an accident.
Billy Bush just went on Sean Hannity's podcast and said something that should end careers at ABC News.
The Man Who Was in the Room
Billy Bush knows this world from the inside — he was the guy on that bus in 2005.
NBC sat on the infamous Access Hollywood tape for months, timing the release for two days before Trump's debate with Hillary — with Anderson Cooper standing by to make it the opening question of the night.
Bush told NBC Chairman Andy Lack directly: "It's wrong. I understand that you've got something here that you think is relevant, but it's wrong."
They didn't care.
What Bush is describing now about ABC News isn't a theory.
It's the testimony of someone who watched the machine operate up close and got destroyed by it himself.
He told Hannity the division had 75 people in it, that he personally knew the man who ran it, and that its entire purpose was "basically getting" Trump.
ABC did not deny it.
How ABC News Built a 75-Person Division to Destroy Trump
Building a dedicated 75-person unit inside a news organization requires executive sign-off, budget allocation, a chain of command, and regular deliverables.
That's Disney money funding an operation aimed at a presidential candidate.
The division would explain a lot about what came next.
It would explain why ABC's Brian Ross went on live television in December 2017 and falsely reported that Trump had directed Michael Flynn to contact Russians during the campaign – not after the election, during it.
That single false report sent the Dow Jones crashing 350 points within minutes.
Ross was suspended four weeks without pay, banned from Trump coverage, and eventually pushed out entirely.
ABC called it a failure to follow "editorial standards."
What it looked like was a network so desperate to nail Trump that its chief investigative correspondent aired an unverified story from a single anonymous source that would have implicated a sitting president in collusion.
The retraction came hours later.
The stock market damage was done.
Then came ABC's David Wright, caught on hidden camera calling himself a "socialist" and telling the interviewer that the network deliberately slants its Trump coverage for political effect.
Suspended.
Nobody asked why his worldview had been driving ABC News stories for years.
Then came George Stephanopoulos.
In December 2024 – weeks before Trump's second inauguration – ABC paid $16 million and issued a formal apology after Stephanopoulos repeatedly called Trump "found liable for rape" in the E. Jean Carroll case.
Stephanopoulos said "rape" nine times.
ABC's position was that this was an anchor error.
Bush's revelation says it was a culture.
The ABC News Anti-Trump Operation Didnt Close When He Won
The reason this matters in 2026 is what it confirms about everything that followed.
During the 2024 presidential debate, ABC fact-checked Trump five times and never touched Kamala Harris once.
Terry Moran spent years on air calling Stephen Miller a "world-class hater" before ABC finally fired him for it.
ABC ran a story about "violent Border Patrol detention" and left out the part where the detained illegal alien had been chasing federal agents with a weed whacker.
The network had a mission. The coverage was the proof.
If ABC built a 75-person division to target one presidential candidate in 2016, the ideology that created it didn't retire when Trump won.
It kept producing content.
Bush named the man who ran the division, declined to identify him publicly, and confirmed he no longer works at the network.
Whether the division itself ever formally closed is a question nobody at ABC has answered.
Sources:
- Joseph A. Wulfsohn, "ABC News had a 75-person division dedicated to 'get' Trump, Billy Bush claims," Fox News, April 6, 2026.
- "Brian Ross out at ABC News months after botched report on Donald Trump, Russia tanked stock market," Fox News, July 3, 2018.
- "ABC News Is Fake News," WhiteHouse.gov, November 19, 2025.
- "NBC – Planned to Use Trump Audio to Influence Debate, Election," TMZ, October 12, 2016.