When Donald Trump wants your opinion, he’ll give it to you
PASADENA, Calif. — Geraldo Rivera was in the room, together with potential apprentices such as Kate Gosselin, Ian Ziering, Vivica A. Fox, Leeza Gibbons, Kenya Moore and Mark Burnett. But of course one head towered above them all, literally and figuratively, and that was the giant head of one Donald John Trump, Sr., the real-estate tycoon whose shock of is-it-orange-or-is-it-white hair was once famously likened to a cover shot in Architectural Digest.
Burnett, the larger-thanlife media mogul behind Survivor, The Voice and The Apprentice, and Rivera, the former day-time talk-show host and Fox News personality known for such TV classics as The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults, are not the kind of celebrities to be caught at a loss for words. Trump, though, is in a whole other league. To paraphrase the once-famous TV ads for the brokerage firm E.F. Hutton, when Donald Trump talks, people listen.
Even if they don’t want to.
The chairman and president of The Trump Organization and founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts, was in fine fettle Friday at the Television Critics Association meeting. He took a chair at centre stage, front — what, you expected the Donald to sit behind Ian Ziering and Leeza Gibbons? — with Lorenzo Lamas on one side and one-time Elite Model Brandi Glanville on the other, and held court.
Rivera was relegated to the back row, appropriately enough, alongside Gosselin, of Jon & Kate Plus 8 fame, and “TV personality” and former Miss USA Kenya Moore. As the old saying goes, when The Donald wanted their opinion, he gave it to them.
Twenty-five million viewers — parent network NBC’s figures — have made this season of Celebrity Apprentice, according to the booming PA system in the room, “One of the most popular seasons yet!”
Trump, sporting a dark suit and red tie so bright it was practically a klieg light. took up the thread. The Apprentice is the No. 1 show on television, he said, with finality and clarity for anyone who was hard of hearing.
Well, not really, a timid voice was heard to say.
“In the demo,” Trump continued. “Eighteen-to-49. It’s No. 1 in the demo.”
Well, not really, a media analyst for an industry website tweeted. The Celebrity Apprentice actually finished behind Mike & Molly and a rerun of The Big Bang Theory in the 18-49 demo, the last time it aired.
The Donald waved his hand dismissively.
“I’m very happy with the numbers,” he said, “It’s done fantastically well.”
The Celebrity Apprentice has been edited down to hour-long episodes this season, instead of last season’s two-hour episodes.
“It’s a better show this way,” Trump asserted. “Two hours is too long. No one wants to watch an hour and 20 minutes of the cast.”
This way, Trump still gets his face time on camera, but the others have their time cut back to where they belong. When two hour-long episodes are aired back-toback, viewers get a double dose of Trump. This is what is known in the Trump vernacular as win-win.
It’s not his call to make, though, he insisted. Those decisions are “up to the folks at NBC. NBC’s been amazing. They’ve been tremendously supportive.”
At its core, The Celebrity Apprentice may be about raising funds for charity, but people watch for the friction. The celebrities bicker and quarrel throughout the hour and then, at the end, the Donald wades into the boardroom and lays down the law. Somebody gets fired. Trump has the last word.
He always has the last word. God help the person, celebrity or otherwise, who disputes that.
“The friction you see is for real,” Rivera said. “What you see is reality. I’ve never done a reality show,” he added, and kept a straight face.
The TV show Celebrity Apprentice is one thing, but if this were real life, Trump was asked, how long would he tolerate Rivera’s insolence?
“Geraldo’s done a good job,” Trump said. “He’s won a lot of money for his charity. I have a lot of people on Twitter and Facebook say they want me to fire him, but that isn’t because he isn’t doing well. They just don’t like the guy very much. I’m very proud of my decision. I took a lot of heat for it. I hear all the time, ‘He deserved to win, but he’s not a nice person.’ I find him a nice person.”
Trump watches “very little” of the video before the boardroom meeting.
“I don’t want to be influenced by that,” he said. “I like to see what’s going on in the boardroom. I have my advisers for that.”
The hits kept coming.
■ Of previous winner Arsenio Hall, Trump said: “He went from oblivion to a show back to oblivion.”
■ Of last week’s dismissed celebrity, NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens, Trump said he assumed Owens would be a flake, “but he could not have been better. He could not have been nicer. Honestly, he was a lot more solid person than I thought he would be. I thought he would be a flake, but he turned out to be a quality guy.”
■ Of the Republican Party asking him to run for state governor of New York, Trump said he was asked, “but I turned them down. I didn’t want to do it. And I’m happy with that. It’s not just the show — I have major business deals I’m doing.”