An ex-producer of former President Donald Trump’s show “The Apprentice” has come out with details about what it was like working on the show, including a claim that Mr. Trump used a racial slur about a Black contestant, an allegation that the Trump camp is refuting.
Bill Pruitt, a producer for the show’s first two seasons, said in the report Thursday that he was under a nondisclosure agreement until this year, which stopped him from speaking out. He said the show misrepresented Mr. Trump.
“By carefully misleading viewers about Trump — his wealth, his stature, his character, and his intent—the competition reality show set about an American fraud that would balloon beyond its creators’ wildest imaginations,” he wrote in Slate.
He described Mr. Trump’s cavalier attitude and the way he would treat women. He says the former president would “leer” at women with “the gaze of a hungry lion” and make comments about their appearance, good or bad.
At the end of the first season in 2004, only Kwame Jackson, a Black man who was a broker at Goldman Sachs, and Bill Rancic, a White man who was an entrepreneur from Chicago, remained. After both were given tasks at one of Mr. Trump’s properties, Carolyn Kepcher, who runs his hospitality units, said Mr. Jackson would be a great addition to the organization.
Mr. Pruitt says Mr. Trump “winces while his head bobs around in reaction” to her advice. After a little back and forth, Mr. Pruitt said that Mr. Trump asked, “I mean, would America buy a n——- winning?”
“Kepcher’s pale skin goes bright red,” he wrote. “I turn my gaze toward Trump. He continues to wince. He is serious, and he is adamant about not hiring Jackson.”
Ultimately, Mr. Jackson lost, and Mr. Rancic became the show’s first winner.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung was quick to rage against those posting about the claim on social media.
“Prove it, b——,” Mr. Cheung wrote in response to an X post from CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers, who is Black, that said “no one is surprised” Mr. Trump used the racial slur.
“You can’t, because it’s a fake and bulls—- story your dumb a— is peddling because [President] Biden is hemorrhaging support from Black Americans,” he said.
In a statement, Mr. Cheung said the story is only coming out “now that Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats are losing the election.”
“This is a completely fabricated and bulls—- story that was already peddled in 2016,” he said. “Nobody took it seriously then, and they won’t now, because it’s fake news. Now that Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats are losing the election, they are bringing up old fake stories from the past because they are desperate.”
President Biden’s reelection campaign, responding to the report, slammed Mr. Trump as a “textbook racist.”
“No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man,” campaign media director Jasmine Harris said in a statement.
Mr. Trump previously has refuted the claim that he used the racial slur. In a 2018 post on X, then Twitter, the former president wrote the executive producer of the show told him “that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word.”
“I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have,” he said, responding to a claim from Omarosa Manigault Newman, a contestant on the show’s first season, that he had said the word “multiple times” throughout the show.
Ms. Manigault Newman worked in the Trump White House as an aide but, after she left, she bashed the former president in a book.
Mr. Pruitt wrote that he doesn’t believe any of the tapes from the reality show’s beginnings will ever come to light.
“We scammed. We swindled. Nobody heard the racist and misogynistic comments or saw the alleged cheating, the bluffing, or his hair taking off in the wind,” he wrote. “Those tapes, I’ve come to believe, will never be found.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.