Billy Bush Slams Former ‘Today’ Cohost Al Roker as a ‘Mean Person’ and ‘Worst Interviewer’ on TV

Billy Bush has some very strong feelings about his former Today cohost.

The television personality, 54, went scorched earth on weatherman Al Roker during the Friday, June 12, episode of the podcast The Nerve With Maureen Callahan, painting a portrait of a workplace defined by jealousy, hostility and sabotage during his brief 2016 run on the NBC morning program.

“The way I describe Al is three words: territorial, vindictive, and chronically unprepared,” Bush said during the podcast appearance.

The podcaster also claimed that Roker’s warm on-air persona doesn’t extend behind the cameras, adding, “People don’t know how mean he was. He’s mean. He’s mean. He’s a mean person. When you say rageful and all that, it’s mean. There is rage in there. There’s jealousy.”

According to the Extra alum, the tension was palpable the moment he arrived at the show. “There was this general feeling they don’t want you there,” he said. “The territorial talent, especially the men — Matt Lauer, Al Roker — definitely did not want me there. You could feel it on their skin. I could feel it in the room with them.”

Bush — who joined Today in August 2016 and parted ways with the morning show two months later following the resurfacing of his controversial 2005 Access Hollywood conversation with President Donald Trump — claimed he had been positioned to become a major player on the program’s third hour until everything unraveled. “The Trump thing happens,” he said, on the podcast.

Among the more explosive allegations: Bush claimed that Roker, 71, once liked a social media post calling him a “whitesplaining racist” while the two were actively working together on air.

“I was on the air with him every day. And so I’m like, ‘Oh, my god, I’m here. I’m new. I’m the new guy. And this dude’s liking tweets from people that are calling me things that are career-ending and awful and not [explicit] true,'” Bush recalled.

When Bush raised the issue with producers, he said nothing came of it. “Al had been there forever, so he kind of, you know, he gets free run of the place for his many credentials and one of them being longevity,” he said.

Bush also alleged that Roker’s resentment was partly fueled by the reception Bush received from female staffers. “Al is furious. He’s rageful. He’s angry. And when I got there, they said, you know, a younger guy with a full head of hair who the women on the staff genuinely liked a lot. And that was infuriating to him,” he asserted during the chat.

As for Roker’s professional abilities, Bush didn’t hold back there either, calling him “maybe the worst interviewer on television” and claiming the third hour of Today would never succeed with Roker at the helm.