Billy Bush to host 'Extra Extra,' his first hosting gig since Trump tape scandal

Billy Bush turned from a household-recognized TV host to a pariah in 2016, when he disappeared from the air after tapes emerged of a graphic conversation he had with Donald Trump.

Bush will return with his first show since going off-air following the scandal, hosting the new syndicated entertainment-news show "Extra Extra" when it debuts in the fall. It promises a more modern edition of the entertainment show currently hosted by Mario Lopez.

“We all have to be able to evolve as we grow,” Bush said in a People story announcing his new gig. “The guy that left the scene in 2016 was already a changed person (since 2005), but I had the opportunity to grow up a little bit. Facing adversity in some way is good. And I feel I’ll be better at my job than I ever was. This is my next step.”

In October 2016, NBC News suspended and later fired Bush, then a host on the third hour of "Today after footage emerged from a 2005 "Access Hollywood" interview with Donald Trump, in which they can be heard having a lewd conversation about sexually assaulting women.

Since then, Bush has occasionally surfaced to apologize and correct the record, like on December 2017, when Trump denied it was him on the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape. 

In a New York Times op-ed titled, "Yes, Donald Trump, You Said That," Bush wrote that Trump's "revisionist history" had "hit a raw nerve in me. I can only imagine how it has reopened the wounds of the women who came forward with their stories about him, and did not receive enough attention."

To them, he said, "I will never know the fear you felt or the frustration of being summarily dismissed and called a liar, but I do know a lot about the anguish of being inexorably linked to Donald Trump. You have my respect and admiration."

Earlier that year, During a May visit to CBS' "Late Show," Bush told Stephen Colbert that the number of women accusing Trump and their stories had made a strong impression on him.

"As I read (their accounts), I said (16) women don't get together and say, 'Hey, you know what would be really fun? Let's take down a powerful guy, ha ha.' No, they don't," he told Colbert. "And I said, 'OK, you're reopening wounds on them, too. Enough's enough. Stop playing around with people's lives.' That upset me."