The Slatest

Donald Trump Has Claimed Another Bush

Smdh.

D Dipasupil/Getty Images

The rise of Donald Trump has been both the best and the worst thing ever to happen to the House of Bush. George the Elder, Barbara the Elder, and Barbara the Younger have broken ranks with their party to slam Trump or back Hillary Clinton outright. They’ll come away from this debacle looking grand, as will George the Younger, whose catastrophic presidency fades further and further into memory with each passing day. Jeb!, however, was thoroughly humiliated by Trump in the primaries, and now it looks as though Donald may have claimed the reputation of another member of the family—entirely by accident.

In the leaked tape published by the Washington Post on Friday, Trump brags about groping women to an awed and cackling Billy Bush, cousin of George W. Bush and then co-host of Access Hollywood.*

At a certain point in the recording, the Post’s David Fahrenthold writes, “Trump and Bush appear to notice Arianne Zucker, the actress who is waiting to escort them into the soap opera set.”

“Your girl’s hot as shit, in the purple,” Bush tells Trump. “Yes, the Donald has scored! Whoa, my man!”

Whoa, indeed. Trump and Bush then proceed to have an enlightening conversation about how Trump’s celebrity status has granted him impunity in his conduct with women:

Trump: You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet.

Bush: [laughter]

Trump: Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab them by the pussy

Bush: [laughter]

Trump: You can do anything.

Bush is currently co-host of the Today Show. NBCUniversal hasn’t commented. Bush’s Facebook fans have.

All of the above are comments on a picture posted this morning of Bush cheerily serving breakfast to members of Today’s studio audience. “If you invite the viewers in and give them bacon they will watch you forever,” he wrote. “That’s my strategy.”

If the fallout from the tape continues to spread, he’ll need all the pork in Iowa. This is, after all, Bush’s second major embarrassment of the year. In a clip that went viral in August, he was impaled by a mojito-stirring Al Roker for his mealy-mouthed defense of Ryan Lochte’s shenanigans in Rio.

Page Six has spoken to an “NBC insider” who insists that Bush will stay at Today. “It happened 11 years ago,” the insider says. “Billy was in a different place. He was a lot younger and more immature. He’s definitely embarrassed by this, but his job at ‘Today’ is safe.”

Still, there’s speculation that Today’s staff won’t take too kindly to what the Post unearthed:

Poor Billy. At least Jeb still has his dignity.

*Correction, Oct. 7, 2016: This post originally misstated when the Washington Post published the video. It was on Friday.

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.