Yep, Donald J. Trump said it

That didn’t take long.

Just days after reports surfaced that Donald J. Trump sought to slither his way out of remarks he made a dozen years ago to a TV entertainment reporter, we find out that the man who would be president made the hideous remarks.

Billy Bush, the disgraced “Access Hollywood” host to whom Trump bragged about grabbing women by their private parts, has written a New York Times essay that shoots down the assertions that Trump has made in private.

Trump reportedly told associates in the White House that the audio recording heard around the world in the waning weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign were made up. The voice wasn’t his, he said.

It makes me wonder: Who in the world does the president think he’s kidding with that ridiculous assertion?

Bush writes in the Times: Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real.

It damn sure was real, man.

Read the rest of the Times essay here.

The revelation that Trump made those remarks in 2005 and Bush’s reaction to it in the moment cost the host his gig as a co-host of “Today.” He was let go by NBC and was thoroughly disgraced.

So it appeared that Trump sought to persuade White House aides that Bush was canned for no reason.

Ridiculous … in the extreme.

Mr. President, you are not president of a nation inhabited by 300 million-plus rubes.