Before Megyn faced a contentious exit from NBC News in 2018, Billy Bush was unceremoniously forced out at the network in 2016 after a 10-year-old tape of him and Donald Trump was leaked.
The so-called ‘Access Hollywood tape’ was from a 2005 interview Bush did with Trump on the set of Days of Our Lives in which The Apprentice host bragged about “grabbing women by the pussy” in a hot mic moment. The footage, in which Bush could be heard laughing, was leaked to The Washington Post just weeks before the 2016 election. And Bush lost his job at the Today show soon after.
In many ways, Megyn’s rocky tenure at NBC mirrored what Bush experienced. On Tuesday’s show, the Hot Mics with Billy Bush host joined her to discuss parting ways with the network and who they have yet to make amends with.
Bush’s Experience
While Bush admitted that he struggled in the aftermath of losing his job at a network he had worked at for so many years on both Access Hollywood and Today, he said he has come to forgive all but one person for what happened.
The lone holdout is Andy Lack, the former chairman of NBC News and MSNBC, who Bush called a “lethal little snake” for his behavior. “He never apologized to me. I called him once, and… [he] was so dismissive. He talked to me for like seven seconds on the phone and was like, ‘I can’t help you. I don’t care,'” Bush recalled. “We’re imperfect people. Good people are capable of doing bad things… But if you own up and you apologize, you’re good by me because I’m the most imperfect.”
Unlike former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim who brought Bush to Today to revamp the 9 o’clock hour or even some of his fellow anchors, Bush said Lack has never expressed remorse for what happened.
Megyn’s Experience
Bush may have been willing to bury the hatchet, but Megyn said her experience with certain talent at the Peacock network has made it hard to do so. “I can definitely get past negative encounters with somebody and get past adversarial experiences with somebody,” she explained. “But I just felt like what they did at NBC was so disgusting and so ruthless that I don’t forgive them.”
Longtime Today host Al Roker and soon-to-be co-anchor Craig Melvin are among those Megyn does not forgive. “Eff Craig Melvin and eff Al Roker,” she said. “Craig Melvin is not a good guy. Screw him. I can’t stand that guy.”
She said the ill will stems from his behavior towards her in her waning days at the network. “He begged me to come on my show, I put him on my show. He begged me to help him on his loser MSNBC show, which I did,” she recalled. “And then the first chance he had to stick the knife in and turn it, he ran to it like, ‘Yes! A chance to dump on the new white woman who’s at 9am on the issue of race’… Craig Melvin is a black man and piled on suggesting I behave racistly.”
Megyn referred to Roker as a “slithering snake of a man” and said, generally speaking, the sunny disposition of morning show hosts that the public sees rarely matches what goes on when the cameras turn off. “[They] are out there so cheery and so sweet to start your day with,” she said. “Behind the scenes, what they care about is their money and their fame.”
‘Tiny, Little Men’
“I know you’re supposed to forgive just for the sake of forgiving, but I have seen zero evidence that they seek forgiveness,” Megyn concluded. “With Steve Bannon and Trump, for that matter, over time, I was able to really contextualize their behavior and see it very differently. But those [NBC people]… I just see as these tiny, little men.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Bush by tuning in to episode 977 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.