The Apprentice is an American game show that judges the business skills of a group of contestants. The show broadcast on NBC. Created by Mark Burnett, a British-born American television producer, the show is billed as “The Ultimate job interview”. The show starts off with 16 to 18 contestants a contestant being “fired” in each episode. The show was hosted by the co-producer of the show, Donald Trump. The winner of the show got to head one of Trump’s companies.
The winners of the show have been named “executive vice presidents” but were actually employed as publicity spokesperson for the Trump Organization. The Apprentice was criticized for being involved with Trump after Trump’s controversial statements about President Barak Obama’s birth. This caused people to publicly call for NBC to fire Trump. The show suffered as the ratings declined as did any other Trump-associated business.
After the leak of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape of a conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush where the Republican presidential nominee was heard making inappropriate sexual comments about women, Burnett was asked to release the pre-edited videos tapes of “The apprentice” as the former show producer Bill Pruitt tweeted that there are far worse and offensive comments made by Trump. A former employee who does not want to be named that Mark Burnett had all the videos of the show Trump hosted for fourteen seasons. However, Mark Burnett and MGM claim that he is not allowed to release the videos as various contractual agreements forbid him from doing so.
The reality show producer has then been accused of protecting Trump by not releasing that video. Burnett denied such accusations by stating that he has never been supporter of Trump’s candidacy and that he is not a pro-trump. Burnett, who does not even own the videos in question, is being pressured to release the unaired videos by public and media.
Donald Trump has also been accused of asking women he interviewed on the show to wear shorter dresses that showed more cleavage. Former insiders reveal that Trump rated the female contestants of the show by the size of their breasts and also asked the male contestants which females they wished to have sex with before telling them about the women he wanted to bed. Several insiders and former crew members have then accused Trump of making inappropriate comments and jokes about the female contestants.
Trump has not only been accused of groping and inappropriately touching women on the show but he has also been accused of knowing about female employees being groped by Oscar nominee Gary Busey and laughing it off. Multiple Apprentice employees and the victim said that the Academy-Award-nominated actor “grabbed” one of their colleagues between the legs during the 2011 season of celebrity apprentice. The staff members were furious and demanded Busey to be kicked out of the show but when the news reached Trump’s ears, he gave Busey a little more than a chuckle and allowed him to remain in the show. Sources claim that he called Khloe Kardashian a “piglet” and “the ugly Kardashian” and fired her for not being hot enough.
Spokesperson of the Trump campaign denied the accusations made by former crew members and stated that they were all hungry for publicity and attention. However, the Trump candidacy campaign has been an uphill battle after the release of controversial racist and sexist comments made by Trump.
