Update: Billy Bush has been suspended from Today in the wake of tape surfacing of Trump making leering sexual comments while Bush joined in, Politico and other outlets report.
"Let me be clear — there is simply no excuse for Billy's language and behavior on that tape," Noah Oppenheim, Today producer, said in a staff memo leaked to Politico. "NBC has decided to suspend Billy, pending further review of this matter."
Initially, it seemed as though Bush might appear and apologize for his role in the scandal. Now it's unclear what, if any, timeline there might be for his return.
Original story follows.
On Friday, a 2005 video of Donald Trump making offensive sexual comments towards women surfaced. Since then, the presidential nominee has apologized twice and had members of his own party urge him to quit the race. (Something he said he would never do.) But the man who joined Trump on that bus more than a decade ago, Billy Bush, has been lying low. It seems that he may continue to do so.
Variety is reporting that NBC is trying to decide whether or not it will ask Bush to skip Monday's episode of Today as the network figures out what to do about the former Access Hollywood anchor.
An unnamed source told the trade magazine that Tamron Hall and Al Roker would host Today's 9 a.m. hour on Monday — without Bush. Perhaps a sign of the situation's severity is that Roker was reportedly scheduled to have the day off to have surgery. Instead, he may be asked to perform a different kind of surgery, helping to save face for the show, which has a mostly female audience.
But this is just one possible scenario. According to The Wrap, NBC is actually looking to have Bush apologize on-air for his participation in the video, which features Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women.
Bush, who deleted his Twitter account in August, initially released an apology on Friday after the video went public. “Obviously I’m embarrassed and ashamed. It’s no excuse," he wrote. "But this happened 11 years ago — I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along. I’m very sorry.”
A source told Variety that a final decision will likely not be made "until later on Sunday," so expect Today to be very interesting tomorrow.