According to Donald Trump, the president can't have a conflict of interest. Trump can not only run his business, and the country, from the same desk, he can treat the United States as just another part of that business. He already had 516 companies. Trump United States will fit right onto the list—at the bottom. After all, being president is no big deal if you don't bother with intelligence briefings and just go with your gut.
Which means Trump has plenty of time to keep his position as executive producer on The Apprentice.
Although Mr. Trump is not starring in NBC’s coming season of “The New Celebrity Apprentice,” the president-elect is still involved: Mr. Trump will be credited as one of the show’s executive producers, a spokeswoman for Mark Burnett, the creator of the “Apprentice” franchise, said on Thursday.
Donald Trump will have another paying job at the same time that he is president. Or rather, he has other jobs, and isn’t about to let this little gig as president get in the way.
For NBC, which nurtured Mr. Trump’s celebrity until he left the show in 2015 to pursue a presidential bid, the fact that the president-elect stands to profit from the program could raise concerns about how a politically polarized audience may react to one of its biggest prime-time shows.
Sure. NBC could be worried about how having an unpopular president behind one of their shows could affect ratings. Though NBC doesn’t seem to be worried about their own totally conflict-free role of reporting on a president who also happens to be a producer on “one of its biggest prime-time shows.”
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Trump is right. He really can’t have a conflict of interest, not so long as his only concern for the country is how he can use it to his own advantage. In fact, why bother with artificial boundaries when Trump can fully integrate the nation into the rest of his organization?
This week, Mr. Burnett met privately with Mr. Trump and suggested ideas for his inauguration, including a helicopter ride from New York to Washington and a parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
That last part actually seems like a good idea. Take a nice long walk down Fifth Avenue, Mr. Trump. See how that goes.