Donald Trump Used N-Word To Refer To Apprentice Player, Says Producer
A producer on The Apprentice whose decades-long nondisclosure agreement recently expired claims that Donald Trump used a racial slur to refer to a player on the reality competition.
Bill Pruitt, a producer who was involved in the first two seasons of the NBC series, says that he was present at a conversation in which Apprentice host/future United States president Trump used the N-word to describe Season 1 runner-up Kwame Jackson.
"What happens next I don't entirely recall. I am still processing what I have just heard," Pruitt writes in a lengthy essay for Slate. "None of [the producers] thinks to walk out the door and never return. I still wish I had."
He continues: "Afterward, we film the final meeting in the boardroom, where Jackson and [eventual Season 1 winner Bill] Rancic are scrutinized by Trump, who, we already know, favors Rancic. Then we wrap production, pack up, and head home. There is no discussion about what Trump said in the boardroom, about how the damning evidence was caught on tape. Nothing happens."
Steven Cheung, a Trump 2024 campaign spokesman, issued a statement to Slate in response. "This is a completely fabricated and bulls–t story that was already peddled in 2016."
In 2016, as the Access Hollywood recording in which Trump's "grab 'em by the p—y" comment surfaced, Pruitt tweeted that he knew of similar and more damning information.
As a producer on seasons 1 & 2 of #theapprentice I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse. #justthebegininng
— Bill Pruitt (@billpruitt) October 8, 2016
In 2018, after Apprentice alum Omarosa Manigault-Newman said that she had heard the recording herself, Trump denied that any tapes of him using the slur existed. He tweeted that Apprentice producer Mark Burnett "called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up."
TVLine has reached out to Trump, NBC and Jackson for comment.
Trump currently is on trial, facing 34 felony counts after being indicted on charges of falsifying business records, including hush-money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to remain silent about their alleged extramarital affair in advance of his first run for president. Those payments were passed off as genuine business expenses by Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen.