Tag: The Apprentice

Jeff Zucker Helped Create Donald Trump. That Show May Be Ending.

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The coziness between the TV executive and Mr. Trump is a Frankenstein story for the cable news era. But then the monster got away.

In December 2015, after the demagoguery of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign became clear, I asked CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, if he regretted his role in Mr. Trump’s rise.

First Mr. Zucker — who put “The Apprentice” on NBC in 2004 and made Mr. Trump a household name — laughed uproariously, if a bit nervously. Then he said, “I have no regrets about the part that I played in his career.”

I was thinking about that exchange when Tucker Carlson of Fox News recently gleefully aired recordings of conversations with Mr. Zucker that Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, had deviously taped in March 2016. Continue reading.

The RNC Is Paying a Former Apprentice Hand Accused of Having Trump Dirt

Chuck Labella worked on Trump’s show for years. Now, despite having no ostensible political work on his resume, he’s helping with the 2020 convention.

Last year, the Republican National Convention began cutting checks to a former producer of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice who was accused of having, as one contestant put it, “all the dirt” on Donald Trump.

From August 2019 through May 2020, the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Convention made a dozen payments totaling more than $66,000 to Labella Worldwide, Inc. for “production consulting services.” The firm is run by Chuck Labella, a former NBC executive and the talent producer who worked on Donald Trump’s famous reality show.

Labella is not just a former Apprentice bigwig. According to actor Tom Arnold, who was a contestant on the show and has since become a vociferous Trump critic, Labella was in possession of Trump’s ostensibly salacious—and, in political and media circles, long-sought—behind-the-scenes Apprentice outtakes. “Chuck LaBella was there and knows all,” Arnold said. Continue reading.

Donald Trump Once Considered Setting ‘Blacks Against Whites’ On ‘The Apprentice’

The following article by Lee Moran was posted on the Huffington Post website August 16, 2018:

“It would be the highest-rated show on television,” Trump boasted on “The Howard Stern Show” in 2005.

President Donald Trump once said he could gain stellar television ratings by pitting black contestants against white ones for a season of his reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”

In a 2005 radio interview on “The Howard Stern Show,” Trump claimed “some person” had proposed the concept of “nine blacks against nine whites.” CNN aired resurfaced audio of the interview on Wednesday.

“And it would be nine blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, strong, beautiful people, right?” Trump told host Stern.

View the complete article here.

Penn Jillette: Trump said ‘racially insensitive things’ during ‘Apprentice’ tapings

The following article by Jacqueline Thomsen was posted on the Hill website August 14, 2018:

Penn Jillette Credit: Gage Skidmore

Comedian and magician Penn Jillette said in a new interview that he heard President Trump “say racially insensitive things that made [him] uncomfortable” during tapings of “Celebrity Apprentice” as new claims from ex-White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” make headlines.

Jillette, who was a contestant on the show in 2013, told Vulture in an interview published Tuesday that Trump would “ramble” during tapings of his former reality TV show.

“I don’t think he ever said anything in that room like ‘African-Americans are inferior’ or anything about rape or grabbing women, but of those two hours every other day in a room with him, every 10 minutes was fingernails on chalkboard,” Jillette said. “He would ask one cast member if he’d rather have sex with this woman or that woman.”

View the complete article here.

President Trump Must Face Accusations of ‘Apprentice’ Contestant

The following article by James C. McKinley, Jr., was posted on the New York Times website March 20, 2018:

A Manhattan judge said on Tuesday that a former contestant on “The Apprentice” can proceed with her lawsuit against President Trump. The plaintiff, Summer Zervos, said that the president defamed her when he said she was making up her allegation that Mr. Trump had sexually harassed her. Credit Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

A New York State judge ruled on Tuesday that a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who has said President Trump made unwanted sexual advances could go forward, raising the possibility of a public airing of other allegations of sexual misconduct against the president.

The decision by Justice Jennifer Schecter of State Supreme Court in Manhattan paved the way for lawyers to seek depositions from several women who accused Mr. Trump of sexual harassment before he was elected and to subpoena Trump campaign records related to his female accusers.

Justice Schecter rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that a state court has no jurisdiction over a sitting president. She cited a United States Supreme Court ruling that allowed Paula Jones to bring a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. Continue reading “President Trump Must Face Accusations of ‘Apprentice’ Contestant”