When the recordings of Donald Trump on Access Hollywood emerged a month before the 2016 election, many people assumed that the ugly admission of gleeful sexual assault would drive the final nail in the coffin of Trump’s political aspirations. But there was another line that also came from others who knew Trump—just wait until everyone hears the things he actually said behind the scenes at The Apprentice. One of the producers on the show was open about Trump’s frequent use of racist remarks, a statement later backed up by former White House aide and Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman. But MGM and The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett sat on the tapes of the show, refusing to release information about what Trump said off the air.
As The New York Times story of Trump’s taxes continues to spill out, it’s now clear that it wasn’t just Trump’s racism and misogyny that was misrepresented to viewers of the “reality” show. Because Burnett also presented to America the idea of Donald Trump as a “successful businessman” who had built a real estate empire starting with a “small loan” from his father. It’s been clear for some time that everything about that story was the opposite of reality—a absolute lie. Trump was handed at least $400 million dollars to support his tacky gold-plated lifestyle, and at every possible point he made the wrong decision, eventually turning that vast mountain of money into a $421 million debt while leaving a string of failed businesses in his wake.
The Apprentice wasn’t a showcase for a insightful businessman looking to pass along life lessons, it was a fantasy created by Burnett that gave a lifeline to a foulmouthed racist failure playing a role.
As the Times reports, Burnett frequently handed Trump monologues in which he bragged about how he had used “my brain” and “my negotiating skills” along with tons of “work” to save his company, turn things around, and make himself wealthier than ever. Every single word of these statements was a lie.
Even as Burnett and production company MGM were promoting Trump as a success, tax records show that his business was bleeding cash. And as they bragged on his negotiating prowess, the truth was that Trump had run out of banks and investors to dupe. No major U.S. bank would touch his collapsing empire. Instead, Trump turned again and again to Deutsche Bank, which for some reason, was willing to extend still more credit when everyone else walked away.
But what’s particularly twisted about the relationship between Trump and Burnett is how much The Apprentice contributed not just to the fiction of Donald Trump, savvy billionaire investor, it actually threw Trump a massive lifeline. Trump actually earned $197 million directly from his contract with the show and related appearances over a span of 16 years. But that wasn’t the end. Another $230 million flowed into Trump’s pockets through promotion and licensing deals that resulted from his appearance on the show.
In the process of propping up the image of Trump as wealthy mogul, Burnett and MGM actually gave Trump more money than he had to start with—a $427 million injection that really could have rescued his business. The problem was that Trump demonstrated no more investment acumen with this fresh influx of wealth than he had with the money that had been heaped on him by his parents or by the whole series of trusting investors he duped in his casino deals.
Rather than learning from his first round of enormous failures and looking for sound investments, Trump used this money to initiate his collection of golf resorts. Resorts that have often required lavish investment to bring them into being, but which have never returned a profit. Instead, Trump has been losing millions on these resorts each year. The money to buy Trump’s golf resorts and hotels didn’t come from any decision he made in his business, it came because his presentation by Burnett made Trump a pitchman for pizza and laundry detergent.
That was far from all that Burnett enabled. Trump’s buffed-up made-for-TV reputation is exactly what allowed him to peddle a string of ghost-written books that supposedly packaged up his “wisdom.” And it’s what allowed him to take veterans, retired couples, and others for their last dime in his fake “Trump University.”
It’s what allowed Trump to run for president.
Donald Trump was never a successful businessman, but thanks to Mark Burnett, he did play one on TV. Burnett and MGM sold the nation on a product that was Trump, real estate tycoon. And it didn’t matter to them that the real Trump was clueless, racist, misogynist bastard who lost more money in a month than most people saw in a lifetime. They simply did not care. Because if Trump made money from this image, it’s a small fraction of what Burnett and MGM made selling the lie of Trump.