Billy Bush was the guy on that bus in 2005 – and NBC used him to try to destroy Trump.
Now he's on Sean Hannity's podcast telling the world exactly what ABC News built – and why none of what followed was an accident.
What he described isn't a conspiracy theory.
The Insider Who Knows How the Machine Works
Bush watched NBC sit on the Access Hollywood tape for months, time its release for two days before Trump's second debate with Hillary Clinton, and hand Anderson Cooper the opening question on a silver platter.
Bush told NBC chairman Andy Lack directly it was wrong to weaponize the footage.
Lack didn't care.
So when Bush says ABC News ran a 75-person division dedicated to destroying Trump – and names it with the confidence of a man who personally knew the guy running it – you're not hearing a rumor.
You're hearing the testimony of someone who watched the machine operate from the inside and got run over by it himself.
"ABC News had a division," Bush told Hannity. "They had a division dedicated with 75 people in it – because I knew the guy who ran the division, which was dedicated to basically getting him."
ABC News did not deny it.
What 75 People Assigned to One Target Actually Looks Like
A 75-person division doesn't exist without executive sign-off.
It doesn't exist without budget line items, a chain of command, editorial direction, and regular deliverables reviewed by people at the top.
That's Disney money – your ESPN subscription, your theme park tickets, your ABC affiliate's local ad revenue – funding a political operation aimed at a presidential candidate.
The output of that division is what came next.
In December 2017, ABC's chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross went on live television and reported that Trump had directed Michael Flynn to contact Russian officials during the campaign – not after the election, during it.
That single story, sourced to one anonymous contact, sent the Dow Jones crashing 350 points within minutes.
Ross was suspended four weeks without pay and banned permanently from Trump coverage before being pushed out of ABC entirely.
The network called it a failure to follow editorial standards.
What it looked like was a correspondent so desperate to land the story that ends a presidency he aired an unverified claim from a single source without checking it.
The retraction came hours later.
The stock market damage was already done.
Then came David Wright – an ABC News correspondent caught on hidden camera identifying himself as a socialist and confirming that the network deliberately slants its Trump coverage.
Suspended.
Nobody asked how long his political agenda had been shaping the stories reaching your living room.
Then came George Stephanopoulos.
In March 2024, Stephanopoulos stated on air that Trump had been found liable for rape – not once, not twice, but ten times during a single broadcast.
ABC paid $16 million and posted a formal apology to resolve the defamation lawsuit before depositions could begin.
The network called it an error.
Bush's revelation says it was a culture.
The Division That Outlasted the Election
If ABC funded a 75-person anti-Trump operation during the 2016 campaign, the ideology that built it didn't pack up when Trump won.
It kept producing content.
The Ross report. The hidden-camera socialist. The anchor who called the president a rapist ten times and cost Disney $16 million.
That's not a string of accidents.
That's a production schedule.
Bush named the man who ran the division, declined to identify him publicly, and confirmed he no longer works at the network.
Whether the division itself ever formally shut down is a question ABC has yet to answer.
They're not going to like being asked – and Trump's supporters already know the answer.
Every story that ran. Every false report. Every $16 million settlement. It was never bias. It was a mission.
Sources:
- Joseph A. Wulfsohn, "ABC News had a 75-person division dedicated to 'get' Trump, Billy Bush claims," Fox News, April 6, 2026.
- "Brian Ross leaving ABC months after false Flynn report," The Hill, July 2, 2018.
- Lindsay Kornick, "George Stephanopoulos and ABC apologize to Trump, forced to pay $15 million to settle defamation suit," Fox News, December 14, 2024.
- "NBC – Planned to Use Trump Audio to Influence Debate, Election," TMZ, October 12, 2016.
