Trump Underplays Serving as Executive Producer on 'New Celebrity Apprentice' During His Presidency

The president-elect said reports that he will spend time on the show are "ridiculous and untrue" but that he will have a "big stake" in it.

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Complex Original

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Trump is underplaying the recent news that he will serve as an executive producer on The New Celebrity Apprentice during his presidency. In a series of early morning tweets, the president-elect claimed that despite the title, he will not actually be working on the show.

Though his adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters Trump has the right to work on the show “in his spare time,” Trump tweeted that “I have NOTHING to do with The Apprentice except for fact that I conceived it with Mark B & have a big stake in it.”

He said the reports that he will spend any time on the show are “ridiculous & untrue.”

Yet even if Trump’s practical involvement in the show is nonexistent, Trump's having a "big stake" in the show could itself be a problematic fact. The New Celebrity Apprentice​ will air on NBC, and the president-elect having this kind of relationship with a major network, which owns countless news shows in addition to entertainment program, is unprecedented. Though Trump would technically be paid by MGM, not NBC, the nature of the relationship is still murky and the implications of the conflicting interests could be disastrous. This comes over a year after NBC cut ties with Trump in July 2015 due to racist comments he made during his presidential campaign. 

Also noteworthy is the fact that NBC is owned by Comcast, a company with regulatory ties to various government agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission, an agency whose chairman will be appointed by the president himself.

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who will take over Trump's previous role as host of the new series, defended the Trump's continuing relationship to show. ”I knew from the beginning [Trump] was going to be executive producer of the show, his credit is on there,” the actor said. “It's no different [from] when I was running for governor and I became governor, my credit as starring in ‘Terminator’… stayed the same."

Meanwhile Carrie Keagan, who will be a contestant on the new season, told Buzzfeed she thinks Trump’s ties to the show are “kinda fucked up.

Even Newt Gingrich, a former adviser of Trump, said called the president-elect's executive producer credit "weird" in an interview on Fox News. “He doesn't need his name in print. Donald J. Trump is going to be the executive producer of a thing called the American government and he is going have this a huge TV show called leading the world,” he said. "He ought to just relax, and give executive producer to Eric or Donald [Jr.] or Ivanka and keep moving forward."

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