The author of a new book on Donald Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice” is revealing a bizarre debate over whether the ex-president created his own character on the show — or whether it was the creation of producer Mark Burnett.
In an excerpt of “Apprentice in Wonderland” published in the Washington Post Monday, author Ramin Setoodeh describes Trump’s obsession with whether he would have run for president if he didn’t have his NBC show.
“So do you think I would have been president without ‘The Apprentice’?” Trump asks Setoodeh each time they met. Each time, Trump’s answer to his own question changed.
“I say yes,” Trump told Setoodeh in their first meeting. He then paused “dramatically,” the reporter describes.
“But some people say no. Many smart people say no,” Trump claims. “It helped me a little bit, probably.”
Describing himself as the young “Marlon Brando” and the macho “Clint Eastwood,” Trump explained his charisma, “Look, you either have it or you don’t have it for television.”
A few months later, Trump didn’t even remember the reporter when they met again. He also repeated the question about how “The Apprentice” helped him.
“I guess it was great for my brand,” he gathers in his new decision. “The theory is they” — Americans — “got to know me, because they didn’t really know me. Mark Burnett and Jeff Zucker, those two main characters, they either get praised or blamed for me becoming president. Mark Burnett says without ‘The Apprentice,’ I wouldn’t have been president. I never spoke to Zucker about it.”
Trump admits that he was playing a character in “The Apprentice.”
“As for Burnett, Trump was an important cog in his reality TV empire, and the two operated as one entity, splitting profits from the show. Even now, it’s hard to know where the mirage of him began and where it ended: Was Trump a self-creation, or made for TV by Burnett?” the book asks.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have run if I didn’t do ‘The Apprentice,’” Trump says. “You know, that’s a little bit of a different thing. I might not have run.”