Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/30/apprentice-producer-claims-trump-said-would-america-buy-a-n-winning.html
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Supposedly there are numerous such recordings.
Even if they do ever get released, it will not change the minds of 45’s cult; that he’s a racist is one of the things they like about him.
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I’ve been pretty frustrated over the Apprentice stuff, it seems like it’s an open secret that there is plenty of documentation about 45’s behavior but that’s all locked up… somewhere
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Bill Pruitt also explains how they worked around Trump’s erratic behaviour and made him appear to be a brilliant, declsive leader and a successful businessman. In fact, most of the piece is about how they crafted polished Trump’s image and enabled him to run for President
Then comes the note from NBC about the fact that after Trump delivers the task assignment to the contestants, he disappears from the episode after the first act and doesn’t show up again until the next-to-last. That’s too long for the (high-priced) star of the show to be absent.
There is a convenient solution. At the top of the second act, right after the task has been assigned but right before the teams embark on their assignment, we insert a sequence with Trump, seated inside his gilded apartment, dispensing a carefully crafted bit of wisdom. He speaks to whatever the theme of each episode is—why someone gets fired or what would lead to a win. The net effect is not only that Trump appears once more in each episode but that he also now seems prophetic in how he just knows the way things will go right or wrong with each individual task. He comes off as all-seeing and all-knowing. We are led to believe that Donald Trump is a natural-born leader.
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The cult isn’t enough for him to get elected. He needs people who are annoyed enough with Biden to vote for him and an N-bomb tape may influence those people.
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Yeah Omarosa (an all-around horrible person and unprincipled opportunist, but one who had plenty of inside access to Trump and his inner circle) wrote about it back in her 2018 book:
She writes the three sources “all told me that President Trump hadn’t just dropped a single N-word bomb. He’d said it multiple times throughout the show’s taping during off-camera outtakes, particularly during the first season of The Apprentice.”
Every new person who comes forward to confirm these stories just pisses me off more because it means they knew for years and continued providing cover for the guy.
ETA: Tom Arnold even claimed to “have the outtakes” back in 2016. Which, if true, just means he’s a fucking coward for not releasing them.
“I have the outtakes to The Apprentice where he says every bad thing ever, every offensive, racist thing ever. It was him sitting in that chair saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children,” Arnold told the Seattle-based radio station KIRO.
The actor and comedian said a contact from the reality TV show passed him the material before last month’s election, but he did not release it because of a confidentiality clause and the expectation that Trump would lose.
Fuck that excuse, if he had that shit he should have dropped it not matter the consequences.
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I was reading that Slate piece earlier and this little bit jumped out at me:
“(In response to detailed questions about this and other incidents reported in this article, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump 2024 campaign, wrote, “This is a completely fabricated and bullshit story that was already peddled in 2016.” He said that it is surfacing now because Democrats are “desperate.”)”
I rolled my eyes, but then it occurred to me “what if instead of denying it, they affirmed it?”
It wouldn’t matter to Trumpers. Not one iota.
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Anyone shocked by any of this in 2024 hasn’t been paying attention. Heck, I heard almost exact variations of the golf club architect’s story of being stiffed by von Clownstick from two separate people (an interior designer and an event planner) back in the mid-1990s.
The problem we face now is that the corporate media keeps pretending that he’s something other than he is and that, as @Melizmatic noted, approx. 25% of Americans like what he is.
As for the comment, this scene from the 1983 film Trading Places – which also contains the n-word --comes to mind.
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If this were enough to swing the vote, the “grab them by the p*ssy” tape would have done him in then. The sexism and racism are part of the appeal of this thug. His sheep will love him even more if this came out. “He hates the ******s as much as we do!” And as far as shaming him, he has shown over and over that he is incapable of that emotion, or most others besides rage and greed. Nah, I suspect keeping this under wraps has more to do with protecting his enablers in the network and the studio who allowed this to go on and don’t have a rabid mob at their backs to avoid consequences.
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I know.
That fact is part of what helps keep me sane and fighting the good fight.
That wasn’t a defeatist statement; if the tapes are ever released, it could have the effect of alienating the ‘undecided’ folks.
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Every lost vote counts toward a potential defeat for this piece of orange garbage. If this alienates Black people who, for some unfathomable reason, planned to vote for him, I’ll take it.
Well, as with this producer the NDA has expired. Time for Tom Arnold to release the goods.
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When Trump allegedly said “would America buy a n— winning?” he was referring to Kwame Jackson, who was given the task of supervising a concert at a Trump casino. One of the people on his team for that task was Omarosa.
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Real profile in courage, that guy…
Coming out now rather than 20 years ago, or at least ahead of the 2016 or 2020 elections is a chickenshit move. Even if he had been sued under the NDA that would have been akin to admission by Trump that it was true. And that could have made all the difference, while in all likelihood putting Pruitt at very little real risk. If it had gone to court the judge probably would have tossed out the NDA given the facts of the situation. And Stormy Daniels was willing to push back against her NDA years ago:
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I wasn’t even thinking of them; self hatred seems to be one helluva drug, and those numbers were fairly small to begin with.
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Yeah, it’s been… interesting to see how Trump supporters have gone from insisting Trump wasn’t racist in his early political days (when he was less overtly racist) to now, where they either say nothing or openly admire him for it. Gosh, it’s like their denial of his racism was disingenuous all along, just like it seemed…
I understand the NDA they signed for the show has now expired, and that’s why it’s coming out now… I’m hoping that means the tapes will finally come out, too. I know it won’t sway Trump supporters, for whom it will be a plus, but it’s just a sharp enough news story to penetrate the “not paying attention” voter that makes up Trump’s lead in polls currently. (Somehow that he’s a literal fascist promising to build more concentration camps than the Nazis isn’t getting through.)
It was interesting that when the story first came up, Trump’s defense was that the producer (supposedly) told him that there was no footage of Trump saying the n-word. Not that he hadn’t said it on the show, not that he had never said it, but that he hadn’t been captured on video saying it. Very much a non-denial denial.
Yeah, I was reading that Trump has a big lead in the polls with voters who don’t usually vote and who pay no attention to politics. That strikes me as a very wobbly lead that could be easily overturned by a “sexy” news story the media can’t ignore that actually penetrates through to them. Plus, it seems like a lot of Trump support (outside his MAGA core) relies on recency bias - people have had the luxury to not pay attention to Trump in the last couple years and have forgotten how terrible even they thought he was. A story like this could provide a needed reminder.
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Guy’s got money. I were him I’d leave the country and drop it all. Civil suits can fuck off.
Plenty of places to live peacefully in the knowledge you did the only right thing.
I’m not a hero, I don’t expect anyone to catch a bullet. That I could do.
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I find it very hard to believe that those NDAs are really so draconian and iron-clad that they could really bankrupt a multimillionaire for presenting factually accurate accounts of Trump’s behind-the-scenes conduct. Especially since Trump wouldn’t be able to sue without conceding the truthfulness of the allegation.
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That’s just locker room talk…right?
/s
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Honestly, if we’re going for the pure calculus of maximizing impact, Arnold (or anyone with actual damning recordings of him) should probably wait to drop the goods in October. Undecided/wobbly voters tend to be low-information and have short attention spans. You want it on their minds when election day rolls around, not buried five news cycles back.
They will, of course, insist that it’s deepfaked. And I get the impression that at least a couple of the producers are in Trump’s pocket, either for political reasons or because cash (or the promise of cash) has been dangled in front of them.
They’d best be sure they get their filthy money in advance, because there’s zero chance he’s paying them after the election.
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I’m at a loss here as the legal system here both offers so much more leeway for the powerful to fuck with anyone publishing anything and much less leeway for contracts to violate all the rest of the law.
I need a degree in Comparative Internet Kommentatiat Law I think.
Ha ha! Only serious!
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