I'm beginning to wonder now if Trump KNEW that that conversation was being recorded.
Was it part of just private talk or on a public forum?
Isn't it illegal to tape someone without their knowledge or permission?
And what does that tell you about the motive of Bush to make that recording and hang onto it for 11 years?
For what purpose? Future blackmail?
For all the focus on what Trump said, what about the man who made the recording and held onto it?
It appears Bush didn't do it. Rather, he's Trump's co-victim in the leak.
Trump's show, The Apprentice, had been nominated for an Emmy, and Trump was in LA to attend the 2005 award ceremony. Access Hollywood, a KNBC entertainment news show, was doing a piece on the Days of Our Lives soap and invited Trump to participate.
Billy Bush, then Access Hollywood's co-anchor (with Nancy O'Dell, the woman Trump failed to seduce) picked up Trump in a tour bus decked out to promote the show's tenth anniversary. There was a crew on hand to video Trump's visit to the Days of Our Lives set. Trump and Bush were mic'ed up but forgot that their mics were open.
Fast forward to 2016. Last Monday, according to CNN, one of Access Hollywood's producers remembered the "lewd and sexist" language he'd edited out of the 2005 piece. But they still had the original raw content. So, they decided to break the story this coming Monday, the morning after Sunday's debate. They set about working on the hit piece.
But on Friday at about 11 am, someone leaked the video to Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who thus scooped Access Hollywood on their own story.
All in all, it's probably just as well that WaPo got its scoop. Hopefully, Monday morning, Trump will be basking in glowing reviews of his debate performance, and the locker-room talk story will be fading away.