Hey rain Drops. Yes, so I finally got merch. That's right. You can buy your allegedly and my Boys mugs, T shirts, rain Drops, hoodies and T shirts all on Carlos Kingshop dot com. That's right. Get your hoodies, your T shirts, and your mugs all on Carlos Kingshop dot com. Welcome to Reality with the King. It's me Carlos kings the King of Reality TV and one of the most sought after executive producers in reality television with over ten years
a production experience. Twice a week on Reality with the King, we'll sit down with my friends across the entertainment industry, recap our favorite reality shows, and revisit unforgettable moments that we are still talking and tweeting about. Hey rain Drops. On today's episode Reality with the King. Oh honey, I'm here with a very special guest. I'm a fan of his work. He wrote the book that I love because you all know I'm a huge fan of the view. Megan McCain is one of my good friends, as you
all know too, because she's always against this podcast. But this guy has another book out called A Prentice in Wonderland. How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett took America through the looking glass, so please give it up for a man Satuda.
Thank you so much for having me, Carlos, I'm so excited to be here with you today.
No, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy press week. The book is out now. I'm super stoked because listen, I'm such a fan of the Ladies Who Punch. It was such a great book, and anybody who's a fan of the view it was sort of like the National Choir meets Vanity Fair meets US Weekly. You know. It gave me everything I needed and wanted. So I'm looking for to your new book,
which is out right now. But talk to me about this book because I'm hearing it is such a deep dive in how Donald Trump and Mark Burnett collectively sort of creative as character that we saw on The Apprentice that inevitably became the President of the United States of America.
You described that perfectly. This is a book about how reality TV, which I know your listeners love and watch and talk about, change the world because it made millions of people believe that the Donald Trump that they saw on The Apprentice playing this boss of the boardroom could
actually lead the country. And in the same way that my book about the View is juicy and dishy and has a lot of interviews and a lot of bombshells and revelations, Apprentice in Wonderland also takes you inside this reality TV show and talks about all the ups and downs and dysfunction and drama and craziness that was going on behind the scenes. But I also talked to Donald Trump. He and I sat down and I interviewed him four
times since he left the White House. We talked two other times on the phone, so six interviews total, where I asked him about everything from am Rosa to why he ended up firing certain boardroom advisors or certain contestants, to his bringing his kids on the show, which is why Ivanka and Don Junior became famous to America. So this really goes through the entire evolution of reality TV. And it was the same thing he ended up using, the same template he ended up using when he ran
for the White House. So this isn't really a political book, but it's about how Hollywood and politics converge and how now we're living in this alternate reality because the president of the United States could be a reality star.
Again, talk to me about The Apprentice, because what I'm so fascinated that you're talking about in this book is the fact that he did The Apprentice to really sort of not only put his name out there, because we already see that with the Trump you know, in Blaze on every single building in New York City, you know, Florida and Las Vegas. But he really wanted to become
somebody that the entire world knew. So when he first met with Mark Burnett, what was that first meeting, like, like, did he set out to become the biggest television star in the world.
So Trump wanted to be famous his entire life. He thought he was going to be a film producer before he went into his family business because his father obviously was a very successful real estate owner and then Trump inherited the family business. But he always wanted to be part of Hollywood. That's why he was on He did cameos on everything from you know, The Nanny, just Sex and the City to Home Alone. He was always trying
to get on camera. And so Mark Burnett and Donald Trump met in two thousand and three, that's when Survivor was shooting at the Ice skating rink in Central Park
that Trump had renovated. It was woman rink, and believe it or not, Rosie O'Donnell was the host of that season of Survivor and Donald Trump was there with his girlfrien from Milania and they met and Mark Burnett had this idea to do another show that was basically like Survivor, but instead of having it be in the jungle or in an island, he wanted to be in the city of New York where contestants were competing to see who
would win. And he needed a business mogul to play this boss of the boardroom, and so he approached Trump. He went to Trump's office. Trump said yes immediately, didn't even talk to his manager, agent, nothing. He was getting paid twenty five thousand dollars an episode for that first season, which I know, that's a lot of money, but for reality TV not really, that's not that much money for Donald Trump, who was allegedly a billionaire at the time.
And so he ended up being on the show and using the show to promote all of his businesses, his family, his home, his life, and become this legendary figure of you know, he'd gone through you know, ups and downs in his own life, and he wasn't that famous. But because of The Apprentice, everyone in America that I knew Donald Trump and they liked him. They loved that he was a tough guy that said you're fired and could decide and choose and look and see who is the
strongest contestant in the boardroom. And that was the persona that he cultivated and created. And that is the reason why he became President of the States.
One of the other reasons why he became this reality star based on your book, is the fact that Mark Burnett allegedly taught Donald Trump how to perform for the camera. So talk to me about that, because as reality TV producer, one thing I always tell my reality stars is the fact that a producer's job is similar to a music producer's job when they have an artist that they're working with is vocal lessons. Is teaching you how to sing the right chords or rap or or whatever the case
may be. You're teaching this artist how to become the greatest singer of all time. So, Mark Burnett, who is arguably a legend in the reality community, what did he teach Donald Trump in terms of how to perform for the cameras.
So I think that he taught him on camera. Trump has very good instincts, so he can be funny, he can be off the cut. He says things that are like totally out of control. But that's really good for reality TV, as you know as a reality TV producer. So what Mark Burnett did was he took this caricature image that Trump has and does and is this character that he plays, and kind of found a way to
fine tune it. And in the boardroom. One of their biggest fights, actually the two of them, was that Donald Trump wants the entire episode of The Apprentice to be the boardroom. He wasn't. He didn't care about the contestants, care about the tasks. He thought there wasn't enough boardroom.
So over the years, they translation enough Donald Trump.
Exactly, They kept fighting over Trump. The boardrooms would become longer. He would sometimes film for four hours doing these boardroom scenes that on TV would be like, you know, five minutes, ten minutes. But he wanted, he loved to be in the boardroom because it made him feel powerful. And the other thing that Mark Burnett really taught Trump was that
what matters the most is your audience size. And Trump's fixation on ratings and his obsession on ratings, that's why he was always making up the numbers and saying they had more people had his inauguration than Obama did. Was because of the show. Because he would wake up every day after the Apprentice aired and go and try to find the ratings. He would facc the ratings to people and he was so excited, and he'd sometimes even make
up the numbers when they weren't very good. He was excited to own the ratings because he learned that the only way to get renewed is as you know as a producer, is through good ratings. So he was very obsessed with the crowd size. He wanted the biggest number possible, and we saw that when he became president.
So you said with him, you said a total four times. And obviously he loves talking about himself, right, So when it comes to reality television, did he talk to you about his feelings towards that genre? Television was a love hate relationship? Was it all love relationship that he had with his genre? Like did he want to be as big as Chris Jenner? When it came to like figuring out how reality television can work for his business.
That's a great question. So Donald Trump and I actually sat in a wardroom in Trump Tower and we watched clips of the show together. And when he saw the theme song, he said he hadn't heard it for years. It made him so that was probably the happiest I ever saw him. He really lit up. Remember that money, Money, Money theme song that's at the beginning of the show. Then he goes, this is a really good show, like he was like he was doing himself and then complimenting himself.
It was a really interesting dynamic, but not surprising. But for in terms of the genre Donald Trump is, this might also not be that surprising. But he's most interested in himself. So I asked him about Kim Kardashian had been on the show in one of the seasons to promote one of her fragrance lines. Obviously, Chloe Kardashian was a contestant on The Apprentice. Didn't end well for her, and so and Kaylen Jenner is now helping Trump and
campaigning for Trump. So he does have ties to the Kardashians, but he's claimed that he'd never seen keeping up with the Kardashians, but that they had something going on, and he understood that that they were using their face somehow to get people to watch them. And he had actually
been offered a show before The Apprentice. It was like the Osbornes, where they were going to watch him be a dad to his family and his kids, and he had turned that down because he wasn't interested in playing a father figure and he wasn't interested in sort of being on camera, even though he loved be on camera
in that way. He was more interested in doing this show because it was a business show and he could use the money because he made two hundred and thirteen million dollars hosting The Apprentice for fourteen seasons.
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait waited the money in other ways? Wait a second, hold on, are you telling me Donald J. Trump made two hundred and thirteen million the entire time he was doing all his seasons of The Apprentice?
Yes? And you know why?
Why?
So back then reality TV was in its early stages, right, so people didn't know really it was. Survivor was on, Big Brother was on, the Real World. It was on, but they weren't not. Survivor was a huge money making machine, but they didn't know the extent to which how reality TV would be or how big it would be, and so when Mark Burnett sold The Apprentice to Jeff Zucker at NBC, he said, I will give you the show.
Donald Trump. Will do this for a very small salary, but what I want in return is all the money from any product placement that could be on the show. And Jeff Zucker at the time didn't know how much revenue they would generate from that, and so Mark Burnett made this deal with Trump saying, you would get twenty five thousand dollars an episode, but we're gonna split whatever product placement we make, so big car company would come. That's why every episode is like an ad. A big
car company would come. They'd say, we're going to do this big car commercial. The contestants are going to work on this car, and then Donald Trump and Mark Burnett would split that fifty to fifty. They get five million dollars just from the car commercial of our Car Challenge, and they'd split that fifty to fifty. And I think a lot of people don't know that's how Donald Trump became rich doing The Apprentice. It was through this deal that Mark Burnett engineered early on where they split all
the advertising. So anything that's in the show, mattel Levi's jeans, the cereal companies that came on, the food companies that came on, all that money went directly in Donald Trump's pocket, which is why he was always promoting them and seeming interested when he would meet these executives and talking about how great Donny Deutsche was or how great whoever was, because this was leading to him pocketing millions of dollars.
My mouth is still on the floor, and I know I have to talk, so excuse my pregnant pause. Two hundred over two hundred million dollars. That's insane. And for my listeners, no housewife is making that much money. Ladies, gentlemen, and they just so you know, that's a shitload of money. But it goes to show you how you really have to be a maverick when it comes to sort of figuring out how to make reality television work for you. Donald Trump is somebody who did it. Chris Jenner is
somebody who did it with her entire family. Bethany Franco did it and was one of the first reality stars to really use the platform to promote their businesses, because you make money with the business. Now, did he ever want to Kardashian his family, because we did see Evanka become pretty much a co star in the latter seasons, and we saw the other brothers make appearances. But listen, it's no secret or it doesn't take a rocket scientist
to know that Evanka is his favorite child. So did he ever see this world where he wanted to use the genre to really make Trump a synonymous name in reality television like the Kardashians for example.
You know it's funny, I'll answer that question. But Bethany Frinkle, remember she started out on The Apprentice. She was on the Martha start. There was a Martha Stuart version. We get into all the drama of that in the book how Martha Stuart tried to come in and take over The Apprentice and Donald Trump was so upset and angry. But what he learned from Martha was that Martha brought her daughter Alexis on to be one of the judges
on the show. And so then when Donald saw that, even though he was very resentful of the Martha version, the next season, that's when he really started to push to make sure that Avanka would be on as one of the judges in the boardroom, and I would argue that he actually did try to Kardashi in his family. Because Avanka started to appear on the show, she was
wearing high end designer clothes. From there, she started judging Project Runway, and then short time after that, we started to see Evanka lines of clothing and stores, which you know were then taken off the shelves after Trump became president because of the backlash. But she started a jewelry line, she started her shoes line. I remember my mom would always see the Avanca line and Tjmax when she goes shopping.
So Avanka really became a mogul on her own, and I would say that it was the Kardashian effect for her because she then became a tastemaker at influence. So she had her own clothing line. People knew who she No one knew who she was. She was someone who had grown up as an EPO baby and was very
very had a very famous father. But Avanka became famous because of The Apprentice because she sat next to her father in the boardroom and she would conduct the firings and he trusted her and he liked her, and she was also great on camera.
They ever talked to you about what was going on in terms of his relationships with some of the housewives that he had on the show. I mean, Niani Leaks appeared on the show, Teresa Judies appeared on the show. Did he ever like go into detail them or did anybody the producer you speak to talk about the reason why they wanted housewives, and particularly to be a part of Celebrity Apprentice.
So the reason they ended up with the Housewives was that NBC had The Apprentice, and so seven seasons in they realized that they couldn't. The ratings were bad, and so they started adding celebrities. So Donald Trump was then judging the celebrities, and then the ratings went back up and NBC had the Housewives. So it was really good corporate synergy for them to then have the Housewives come on.
So there's information about Ninnie Leaks in this book. She was There was one day that she swarmed off and Donald Trump had to go into the sidewalk and convince her to come back into the boardroom. We also talked about a very famous boardroom in season fourteen UH where Kenya Moore and vivid a Fox. Do you remember this?
Yeah, of course is injected in my vein is my blood type?
Yes, we're fighting, and Heroldo was sitting in between them, and Donald Trump was so excited when I brought up that boardroom. He talked about how people still talk about it to him and bring it up to him, and Eric said, it was very dark when they went through Kenya's phone and realized that she was tweeting from vivid a Fox's phone. It was just a very dark moment.
But what was so interesting was that when he told that story, he was watching the clip and he saw that Heraldo was very quiet because he was between the two women and they were fighting, and Roaldo kind of slid by. Donald Trump then tells me a story about why he and Miroaldo had a falling out, and while he was telling that story, he accidentally admitted Donald Trump for the first time to journalists that he lost selection in twenty twenty.
So wait, wait, wait, that's breaking news.
It is breaking news. You have to read the book to get the full story. But I'm giving you the I'm giving you some here, the cliff notes version. He said, when I lost selection, Heralda called me and then catches himself and realizes what he said. So I actually think that Donald Trump knows that he lost election, but he's playing a reality character and he knows how much attention he gets for denying that he lost selection. So this is like really really high level performance art that we're
dealing with. Because Donald Trump is a reality star, and I think that's really important for people to remember when you look at politics and what he's doing. He's a reality star. He's a very good reality star, and we're now all living in his reality.
I am so fascinated by this because the thing I always to try to tell my audience about reality stars is the fact that they're not normal, and that's not a dig there's nothing negative about that. They're not normal in the sense of how they operate. They have a high self esteem, of confidence. Some have this delusion of grander.
It's if you want to be the biggest reality star in the world, you have to have bigahnahs, you have to have to have grit, and you have to have this sense of high self esteem and not really understand the real world. Because when I deal with some reality stars, the stuff that they talk about, I'm like, that's not happening at all, Like you made this up in your mind.
You convinced yourself that we are against you, or that somebody's against you, and that's not the quote unquote reality of this situation, as you were fortunate enough to have these many sit downs with him.
Is it a character trait that he just has to where like most reality stars, he truly does believe his own hype or does he know like I'm playing a character, which we call the real life special is when the real light comes on the camera and you just all of a sudden become like this person, and then when the camera's off, you're back to normal. Which one would you say he is? Or is he a little bit of both?
I think what happened was the red light turned on and the Red Light Special never went away. So I think the character he played on TV then started to become his own personality. And that was actually an analogy. One of the contestants from season one, his name was Sam, told me it's kind of like when he thought he was playing a character and then he became that character. Another executive NBC also compared it to Austin Butler when
he was Elvis. You know how he was like mumbling on his press tour and we couldn't tell what was going on because he was like talking like Elvis even though he was a real person and he was trying to be Austin Butler. That's what Donald Trump I think is like he played this character on The Apprentice for fourteen seasons. He got so much positive affirmation, so much money, so much encouragement, so much love from the American public,
that that then became part of his personality. Because when I sat down with him, it's not like he was different than he is on TV. He's actually very similar than he is on TV. He's funny, he says things that sometimes don't make sense that you know, tangents. But he is a reality star, and he does drink his own kool aid, and he does believe he's the very best, and he does believe he deserves anything. And he does I believe he should run again. He believes in himself.
He has that confidence that a reality star has. And we're all along again. We're all along for this ride. And one of the reasons why I call this book Apprentice in Wonderland. It's like Alice in Wonderland, Right, we all went down the rabbit hole with him. But we can't wake up, we can't go back to regular life because reality TV is now taken over the White House.
Fascinating. I'm beyond fascinated by this. Speaking of fascination, I'm a Rosa Manigault, Okay, I mean when The Apprentice first debut, I was maybe a sophomore in college, I believe, and in my journalism class, we were all just given like topics right about and I'm like, I'm going to talk about like I'm a Rosa Madigal at the Apprentice. So my headline was, you know, the angry Black Woman.
And at the time, yes.
No, no, no, no, no, please please feel free. No, it was this. It was the first time we kind of heard this sort of acron was called ABW is still for angry Black Women, and Amorrosa was like the face of it. And it was when television, whether it was scripted or unscripted, was kind of going down this path of showing black women, you know, being very assertive and you know, you know, talking loud or whatever the journalists
and the media we're saying out the time. So long story short, I've always been fascinated by her she then became an employee at the White House. So when it came from when it came to Amrosa, what was the decision making not only casting her and keeping her on the Apprentice to make appearances that ultimately led to her having a position in the White House.
I think that's the perfect example of the thesis of this book, which is that reality TV came crashing into the real world, and we can't now take that back, because you're right, Amrosa was a character and she was
the villain. And it was also very controversial because she was the only black woman on the first season and she was being portrayed as a villain, and it was a stereotype and a lot of people at the time, I remember this was before social media, but found it very offensive that Amrosa was saying one thing to her contestant and then trying to undermine them. She wasn't a team player, she was creating drama for the sake of drama.
She wasn't being honest. And remember when she was in that construction site and a piece of construction, Eric Trump talked to me about this actually Donald Trump's, so it fell on her shoulder, and then she claimed that she had a concussion and she couldn't work, and she sat down and she couldn't. So the book goes through the evolution of Amrosa, and I talked to Donald Trump about arm Morosa, and so in season one, the first time she was on the show, what happened was that she
was that character. She was who she was undermining people and kind of backstabbing people. And because she became so popular, they brought her back with two seasons of Celebrity Apprentice, even though she wasn't really celebrity, but maybe she was
because she's Amors and everyone knows who she is. And Donald Trump really loved her, loved the ratings, loved the drama, loved that there was no way that her spotlight would be bigger than his because he was more famous than she was, and that she relied on him for her fame.
And then he brings her into the White House, and he tells me in the book that a lot of people warned him against it and he didn't think it would end well, but he still brought her in because he's conditioned to think about ratings, right, and Amrosa always brings ratings, and by bringing in he throws people. He gets a lot of press. People are confused, they're interested,
like that's the way Donald Trump operates. And then when it goes badly and she secretly tapes records him and writes her tell all book, he feels he genuinely feels very betrayed by her. He claimed to me that he didn't see her much in the White House, although we know from her book that they did see each other quite a bit and that she couldn't cut the mustard in the White House. And if you read the book in full, you'll see his descriptions of her and their feud.
But Donald Trump really thrives on feuds. He loves feuds, and am Rossa was a phenomenon in his life and a huge star as a results of The Apprentice.
Okay, so one of his decision making calls, you're you're.
At You're at a loss for words.
I'm sorry, no, this is this is I mean, listen, me and my listeners are like gagging at the same time. But that's how we are. No, I'm shocked, although I shouldn't be, but whatever, I am.
But it's shock. It's shocking. It's shocking that the reality TV that we All Love and Watch has now infiltrated the White House and there's no way to pull it back. And a lot of journalists and people that interact with Trump, probably unlike your listeners, aren't so well versed in reality TV, so they're not looking at Donald Trump like a reality star. That's one of the arguments of this book, and it
is a page turner. It is really juicy. But when you get to the end, there's a huge scene at the end where I go to mar A Lago and I really we really realize and see how the reality star of Donald Trump is lined up with who he's trying to be as a politician and this illusion that we have and this mirage that he's created, and really the repercussions of reality TV in our culture.
One thing I know, being a reality producer, that I get flag for is like, is it real? Is it scripted? Did you guys like make the sub Are they fighting for no reason? All those things? And when you look at the political climate right now, right it's like nothing I've ever seen before in my lifetime. And my jaw is constantly dropping when it comes to just how listen, A lot of people, whether they're senators whatever role they play, you know, in the White House or even in DC.
A lot of people are becoming famous based on the arguments that are happening in Congress, you know, based on us giving you know, getting access to kind of seeing how some of these situations are current, whether it's trying to pass the bill or whatever discussions that are happening, you know, in DC, and we're seeing like people cuss each other out. We're seeing people damn there coming to blows, you know, fighting. We saw obviously what happened on January sixth,
you know that the insurrectionists. You make a really good point, and I wonder if Donald Trump realizes that he and I'll say this, Donald Trump to me single handedly turned Washington, d C. On its head and the White House and everything we were taught growing up studying a government or you know, judge things about the United States of America that he single handily flipped it and turned this into things that we will watch or reality TV, Like, does you take any ownership in what DC and the White
House has become.
The only ownership he takes is pride that he was able to come in as an outsider and shake things up. But you also know, for every reality TV star, especially the ones that behave badly, they're not going to ever say, oh, well, I admit I shouldn't have done that. They don't apologize, they don't admit defeat, they don't admit fault. And these
are all qualities in Donald Trump. But he again has always been rewarded for being a great reality star, so he has no incentive to say, you know what, I take ownership for the fact that I've done this or this or now GC's a mess. He's claiming he quote drains the swamp. He's claiming he's an outsider that's going to fix things and build a wall. He's claiming all these certain things. But again, it's the training in reality
TV that has led him this way. And the only way in which I think we can really understand what happened is by going back and studying the Apprentice and unpacking what we as an American country and as a society have contributed to this and understanding what's happening. Because the media right now, the way they're covering him, they're acting again like he's a traditional candidate, and he's not.
He's our first reality TV president, and we have to educate ourselves on what exactly is happening here.
Do you think he'll win again and this later this year?
I think that based on all the time I spent with him, and based on understanding the way he uses the cameras and the media and attention and the spotlight. Although there are a lot of people that don't like him and are mad at him, and he's now a fellon, I do think he has a very good chance of winning, guess.
And a lot of it has to do with the fact that he knows how to use the power of the media for his benefit.
He understands the value of cameras following him everywhere, and by following him more than anyone else, he ends up being the winner by default. Right, So we're only talking about him. So when November comes around, although there's so much baggage and problems and legal issues, if you've only paid attention to Donald Trump, he's making the calculation that
people are gonna en up voting for him. He's turned the presidency into a sense a popularity contest, and he's just trying to get the most amount of attention.
Interesting, Okay, I want to move into his uncensort thoughts about the celebrities he's been in contact with, whether it's been on The Apprentice or justin life. Can you give us some tea? And yes, guys, please buy. The book is out in stores now. Apprentice in Wonderland. Okay, So I'm going to give you some names I want you doesn't give it a little tidbit about his fossil them, Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift was interesting because this was in mar A Lago and I asked him this Taylor was on her Aeros tours. She's still on her Aras tour. What he thinks of Taylor and Taylor had come out in twenty twenty and actually says she was a Democrat because in twenty sixteen we didn't know. And it was very interesting because Donald Trump loves picking fights with celebrities. He loves going ahead to head with celebrities. But even he knows that the Swifties are very loyal and Taylor Swift is very,
very famous. So he describes her to me in very hedged language. He holds back and rather than talk anything about her, say anything negative, he calls her beautiful, very beautiful, unconventionally beautiful, and used the word beautiful five times in describing Taylor Swift. Then he asked He said he knew that she probably doesn't like Trump and then asked me how as a country star that was possible. And I had to then explain to the former president. I states
that Taylor Swift is no longer a country star. She makes pop music. And he was, you know, kind of a little confused about that, claimed that he didn't listen to her music, and then asked me how Garth Brooks doesn't support him, because Garth Brooks is a country star, so obviously Hollywood is very important to him and famous people are very important to him. But he held back on Taylor and just commented on her beauty. And as a result of that, the Swifties have now come out
in full force and they do not like this at all. Wait.
Wait, the Swifties don't like any of this.
No.
They trended on Twitter when this part came out. They said, stay away from her. Ah, Donald Trump commenting on Taylor Swift's beauty. They do not like that. Even the nice thing he said about her did not sit well with them.
No, I'm laughing because I'm like he tried his best not to have the swifties attack him, and they're doing it anyway because you're calling her beautiful, So that to me is super funny. He's afraid of the swift day.
You're gonna have to read the way and describe it. He does it in a weird way because he keeps repeating it over and over again. So I think to him as a compliment, but I think to other people that read it, it did read a little creepy.
Chloe Kardashian.
So, Chloe Kardashian was on The Celebrity Apprentice. This was in the early seasons of the Kardashians and she hadn't blown up, and at the time, Donald Trump was very upset that Kim wasn't the contestant, that they only got Chloe, and Kim was on Dancing with the Stars. So there was a Huffington Post article about Chloe being fired from the show because Donald Trump thought quote that she was
overweight at the time. And so when I mentioned Chloe and we watched a clip of Chloe, he told me that he had seen her recently and she looked quote so much better, and that she couldn't cut it on The Apprentice because she wasn't tough enough. But there are producers who talked about the Hoppington post and me and said that she was He was very misogynistic toward her and made comments about her weight behind her back. So
it was a very ugly chapter in her life. And Chloe has come out and said how she really didn't enjoy being on the show.
Yikes, yikes, yikes. Okay, I got two more for you. Dennis Rodman.
Donald Trump loves Dennis Rodman. He was on The Celebrity Apprentice twice. He said that Dennis Rodman was cool. He
dated Madonna back in the day, which Sean Trump really liked. Again, it's connection to celebrity, and he actually said, believe it or not that when he was thinking about talking to Kim Jong un of North Korea, the dictator of North Korea, he thought about calling Dennis Rodman and asking him for advice because he felt like Dennis Rodman knew more than the White House advisors who were there to help him
about international relations. And when Donald Trump sat down with Kim Jong Un, he brought up Dennis Rodman and their association and mutual friendship with Dennis Rodman. So he talked to the North Korean dictator about Dennis Rodman being on Celebrity Apprentice, but he is a huge fan of Dennis Rodman's and he said he got Donald Trump got black because Dennis Rodman was drunk in the first time around, and Donald Trump just wouldn't fire him because he was
so good for the cameras. And he finally got fired. Do you remember why he got fired? Because there was a project where they had to do something for Malania's beauty line and they sell Milania's name wrong and Dennis Rodman didn't catch statt and so Milania was very offended.
And Donald Trump and I watched that clip and he really lit up that Milania was because there's so much speculation about what's going on Donald and Malania, but he lit up that Malania was funny on the show, and he really liked that his wife had a chance to be funny on the show.
Oh jees, this is so juicy. Okay, one more Debra met saying, which we all love, will and Grace. What did he say about my grace?
Okay, So this is going to be a huge surprise to your listeners. But Donald Trump and Debra Messing have been fighting and feuding for years because she's obviously very liberal and was very very she went after him on social media when he became president, understandably so for his policies.
So back in the day, the Apprentice of Will and Grace were on the same night, and Donald Trump told me that they were at an NBC event and Deborah Messing came up to him and was very complimentary and very flattering, very thankful that the Apprentice was helping the network, and he admitted to me that he found her to be very, very attractive and beautiful, and he almost seemed hurt that Deborah Messing, who he seemed to have a crush on and talking about her and language that sort
of suggested that he had a crush on her, no longer liked him. And it almost was like again a scene out of a reality TV show where Donald Trump liked Deborah Messing, Deva Messing stopped liking Donald Trump, so and now Donald Trump doesn't like Debora Messing and they
had in this messy, messy feud. But there's an entire section of this book about Will and Grace because Donald Trump also saying at the Emmys with Megan Malally and he talks about why he's sang Green Acres at the Emmys with Megan Malually and what prompted him to do that live on television.
Every story just gets better and better and better. And one thing you talked about earlier was policy, and I do hear some of his policies as president he got from doing celebrity princes or just the princess in general.
In terms of well, you know, inviting the kash Kim Kardashian into the White House. That's a total reality star move. Going to Dennis Rodman when talking about, you know, North Korea, when he signed a Farmersville and he couldn't really remember what the farmer's bill was, but he posted at the time a clip of himself singing at the Emmys. Everything he does always traces back to show business. So he governs the country as a reality star, and I think
that's really important for people to understand. He makes his decisions based on what was successful when he was on the Apprentice, and that's what he knows, and that's the world he knows. So if you go back and you look at what he's effective at, or what he tried to do, or why he was able to not really
do anything during COVID. It's because there are limits to start them right, There's only so much to do as an influencer, as a reality star, and when it actually you have to actually move the needle and make tough decisions. It's a little harder in the real world than it is on TV.
Did you get a sense from him that he loves politics or he just sees this as like a gig.
He seemed so much happier when talking about The Apprentice than when talking about Washington, DC. Because when he was on The Apprentice, he was a character that people liked, and as president, he's not a character that people like.
So that's the thing. And again to bring it back to reality stars. So I always tell people reality stars are the most sensitive group of people in the world because they're being judged for, you know, oftentimes being their authentic selves. And all reality stars, at least in the beginning, they're obsessed with the comments on social media. They have this need to be liked by everybody. I always got this sense that when he became president. Yes, he has his base, you know, he has his fans, and he
has people who clearly are obsessed with him. But I always felt that he did not enjoy Hollywood, the one industry to me that he seemed to be happy to thrive in that they shun him, and to me, I feel like he still is upset about that.
He's very upset about that. You'll see that in the book. He's obsessed with Hollywood. He told me he spent a lot of time talking about Hollywood, the people that betrayed him, the people that he used to invite over his house that no longer want to talk to him. He claimed that he's winning the vote secretly. Guess where. Not in Ohio and Florida, not in any of the swing states. He told me he's secretly winning the vote in Beverly Hills.
Why Beverly Hills. Not just the housewives, but a lot of celebrities live there, And so he wanted me to know that secretly, in Beverly Hills people support him. He's also very upset still after all these years, that he never won an Emmy for The Apprentice. But that's a whole other story.
And ah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, the Apprincess was legendary. It was an iconic show. I am shocked and did not win an Emmy. Speaking of which two more questions. Did you speak to Mark Burnett at all?
Mark Burnett and I communicated for this book. He did not want to do an official on the record interview. But he is in this book and you will see how he's in this book when you read the book. But his presence is certainly in the book throughout the book.
Oh, he's so legendary. I just he was.
One of the stories that was interesting was that he really really really hates the contestants when they came into audition for the show. So there was a Contestancias and won. Her name was Heidi. She was a fan favorite. She told me when she walked in. The first thing he said to her was, Oh, that purse that you have is a fake perse She was carrying a Gucci at the time, and he did that to really try to rile her up to see what kind of reality star
she would be. But there's a lot if you love reality TV, there's also a lot in this book where it deconstructs the process in which they found the contestants, what it was like behind the scenes, because he's again this was in the early days of reality TV. How Mark Burnett pulled all the levers they had. They were all once they were vote off the show. They all lived together in a hotel, but they gave up their phones, they gave it their wallets, They had no contact with
the outside world. They really controlled these contestants to try to make sure that they weren't influencing what was happening. And Donald Trump, weirdly enough, hung out with them when the cameras weren't rolling. So with other reality hosts, they really don't want to be near the contestants when the show's over. But Donald Trump really liked them. But we go into the whole process and we see how Mark Burnett was the ultimate puppet master and really controlling everyone.
Mmmmmmmmmmm. Okay, So last question for you. This is Juicy one, okay, and the book Trump shares his biggest regret in show business.
His biggest regret in show business. He claims that Jeff Zucker got his job in CNN because Donald Trump helped him and gave him a recommendation with an influential executive at CNN. And so Donald Trump thought that by helping Jeff Zucker go to CNN, he would always get really nice coverage from CNN. And then they had a huge crazy falling out. But wait, can I tell you one more thing, one more story, one more story.
By all means yes.
So the funniest story that he told me, And it wasn't intentionally trying to be funny, but he had. The entire family has a tremendous affection for John Rivers. She won the second season of Celebrity Apprentice. She was, you know, her care was in a tough place, and then she came back because of the show and ended up doing more on e and was in one of the Iron Man movies, iron Man three, I think, And so being on the Celebrity Apprentice really helped Joan and she credited
Donald Trump with a lot of that. And so Donald Trump told me, he said that Joan really, you know, respected her, respected him. Joan really respected Donald Trump and really admired him. And he said, I know for a fact that Joan Rivers voted for me in twenty sixteen. The only problem with that was that Joan Rivers wasn't alive. But again, he's a reality star. He knows the good sound lights to say they're not true. But that's a
great confessional watch on a reality show. And then the producer would have to cut to like someone else saying, actually, mister President, he's no longer with it, she was no longer with us.
Oh my god, and everyone you have it there. I mean, listen, this book is so juicy. I literally want to nestle up in my bed, like like I did with The Ladies Who Punched. By the way, I like read that over three day weekend. I was like flying and I'm
like on the plane, I had a long flight. I'm like, I was so into it because you're such a genius at making us the reader feel like we're in the room having these conversations that you're having with these people, and the access that you're able to get is just splendid. It's I mean, job well done on this. And I listen, I smell another best seller from you with this one, my friend. It's thank you so much.
Let me know when you read it. And I think you can just read it on a beach over the holiday weekend or if you're going on a trip somewhere, like it's a fast read and I can't wait to hear what you think.
No, I certainly will, certainly will so again. Rain Drops Apprentice in Wonderland is out in stores. Now is out in bookstores and they can get this like online, where can everyone get this?
Amazon? You can get a Kindle version, you can get an audiobook version. It's wherever books are sold, Bars and Noble. It's a widely released book and you can get it wherever books are sold.
Thank you so much for hopping on Reality with the King has been an honor and a pleasure to meet you. Finally, like I said, I'm a huge fan of your work and I know I'm going to be a huge fan of this book too. Thank you for listening to Reality
with the King. New episodes drop on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Share, comment, follow, and subscribe to Reality with the King wherever you get your podcast, visit Reality Withtheking dot com and be sure to follow me at the Carlos King Underscore on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and yes Baby, my YouTube channel where you could get all of my visuals, baby, my expressions. Yet, don't forget tweet me your thoughts and hot takes about this episode using the hashtag Reality with the King. Reality with the
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