A former producer on Donald Trump’s business reality series, “The Apprentice,” is revealing a time in which he directly heard the newly convicted ex-president refer to a Black contestant as a n-word.
Bill Pruitt, who worked on the show for its first two seasons, penned an essay for Slate detailing the first season finale stakeholders conference to decide the winner between the final two contestants, Bill Rancic, who is White, and Kwame Jackson, who is Black.
According to Pruitt, both men were described as “capable and confident. “Apprentice” judge Carolyn Kepcher made her case about why she thought Jackson was the best candidate and was quoted by Pruitt as saying, “I think Kwame would be a great addition to the organization.”
Pruitt says Trump was “clearly resisting” Kepcher’s opinion before wincing repeatedly and allegedly asking, “Yeah, but I mean, would America buy a n—– winning?”
“Kepcher’s pale skin goes bright red,” Pruitt recalls in the essay. “I turn my gaze toward Trump. He continues to wince. He is serious, and he is adamant about not hiring Jackson.”
“Afterward, we film the final meeting in the boardroom, where Jackson and Rancic are scrutinized by Trump, who, we already know, favors Rancic. Then we wrap production, pack up and head home,” he continued. “There is no discussion about what Trump said in the boardroom, about how the damning evidence was caught on tape. Nothing happens.”
Rancic was eventually chosen as winner with Jackson becoming the runner-up.
Pruitt’s story corroborates a previous similar allegation made by former “Apprentice” contestant and later short-term Trump employee Omarosa Manigault Newman in 2018.
“My certainty about the N-word tape and his frequent uses of that word were the top of a high mountain of truly appalling things I’d experienced with him during the last two years in particular,” Manigault-Newman wrote in her book, Unhinged. “Using the N-word was not just the way he talks but, more disturbing, it was how he thought of me and African Americans as a whole.”
Soon after her messy and unceremonious January 2018 departure from the Trump administration, Manigault-Newman said of her former boss “the person I’d thought I’d known so well for so long was actually a racist.”
Trump, recently convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records, will be sentenced on July 11.
