‘Apprentice’ Staffers Doubt That Trump N-Word Tape Exists: ‘It Would Have Leaked Long Ago’
Jon Levine
President Donald Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to rip the Washington Post’s analysis of how his administration is handling the government shutdown, which just entered Day 22 and is now the longest partial shutdown in U.S. history. “I just watched a Fake reporter from the Amazon Washington Post say the White House is ‘chaotic, there does not seem to be a strategy for this Shutdown. There is no plan,'” Trump tweeted. “The Fakes always like talking Chaos, there is NONE. In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me, and…” Trump’s “Amazon Washington Post” dig is a reference to how Jeff Bezos, the chairman and CEO of Amazon, purchased the paper in 2013. Also Read: Laura Ingraham Says Media Manipulates Public on Shutdown With 'Sob Stories of Government Workers' He continued in a followup tweet: “….I do have a plan on the Shutdown. But to understand that plan you would have to understand the fact that I won the election, and I promised safety and security for the American people. Part of that promise was a Wall at the Southern Border. Elections have consequences!” White House Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, Philip Rucker, quickly responded: “It seems the president was watching @PeterAlexander, @kwelkernbc and me talk on @TODAYshow this morning about the lack of a strategy in the White House to end what is now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.” Negotiation talks between Trump and the Democrats have been on hold since POTUS walked out of a meeting Wednesday. Today, the shutdown surpassed the 1995-96 government closure as the longest in American history. Also Read: AP Dinged for 'Takes Two to Tango' Tweet Blaming Democrats and Trump for Shutdown Trump has canceled his planned trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this month in anticipation of a protracted fight over the issue. He held off on declaring a national emergency Friday. In another followup tweet this morning, Trump wrote: “We have a massive Humanitarian Crisis at our Southern Border. We will be out for a long time unless the Democrats come back from their ‘vacations’ and get back to work. I am in the White House ready to sign!” Also Read: Jimmy Kimmel Put a Federal Employee to Work During Trump's Government Shutdown (Video) See the tweets below: I just watched a Fake reporter from the Amazon Washington Post say the White House is “chaotic, there does not seem to be a strategy for this Shutdown. There is no plan.” The Fakes always like talking Chaos, there is NONE. In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me, and… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2019 ….I do have a plan on the Shutdown. But to understand that plan you would have to understand the fact that I won the election, and I promised safety and security for the American people. Part of that promise was a Wall at the Southern Border. Elections have consequences! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2019 It seems the president was watching @PeterAlexander, @kwelkernbc and me talk on @TODAYshow this morning about the lack of a strategy in the White House to end what is now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history https://t.co/FKfEXtCMVV — Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) January 12, 2019 We have a massive Humanitarian Crisis at our Southern Border. We will be out for a long time unless the Democrats come back from their “vacations” and get back to work. I am in the White House ready to sign! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2019 Read original story Trump Rips ‘Amazon Washington Post’ Over Shutdown Criticism At TheWrap
Did President Trump secretly utter the N-word while starring on “The Apprentice” as many have whispered over the years?
The answers, according to a new piece from The New Yorker is probably “no.” In a deep dive into the relationship between Trump and “Apprentice” creator Mark Burnett published Thursday, New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe spoke with several former show insiders who said if such an explosive recording existed it would have leaked by now.
“If somebody had the goods, it would have leaked long ago. There were no Trump fans on the set. I don’t know a single person who worked on the show who voted for Trump,” an anonymous show employee told Keefe.
On the record, Jonathan Braun, a longtime senior editor on the show, also said he thought the idea of an N-word tape was bogus.
“I was the supervising editor on the first six seasons,” he told Keefe. “I didn’t watch every frame, but in everything I saw, I didn’t hear him saying anything so horrible.”
A third staffer pointed out that Trump was never alone on set and was constantly being watched by up to a hundred people, in contrast to his infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump had assumed he was alone.
The piece by Keefe estimated that there could be as much as 60,000 hours of unaired footage and outtakes from Trump’s time on ‘The Apprentice” and it’s unclear how much of it has ever been reviewed.
Even if an N-word tape did exist, people close to the show also said it would be impossible to release because it would open up M-G-M Television — which now owns Burnett’s company — to a lawsuit.
“Mark Burnett cannot release the tapes. Period. Even if Mark Burnett wanted to release the tapes, Mark Burnett cannot release the tapes,” a lawyer for M-G-M told Keefe. “These are binding obligations, which means that if M-G-M were to violate them — by releasing footage not just of Trump but of anyone who appeared with him onscreen — the studio could be sued.”
Still rumors of an N-word tape continue to persist and were most recently stoked by former White House aide and Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault, who bluntly declared in her White House tell-all that the N-word tape did exist and that Trump said the word “multiple times” on set. Omarosa has said, however, that she never personally heard Trump say the word and cited three unnamed sources for her explosive claim.
