Good Idea, Amazon — Give All the Trump Kids TV Shows
Donald Trump (bottom, 2nd L) cheers alongside (from bottom L) U.S. Representative of Florida Byron Donalds, U.S. Senator from Ohio and vice president J. D. Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, (from top R) Co-chair of the Republican National Committee Lara Trump, son Eric Trump, son Donald Trump Jr., and US TV news personality Kimberly Guilfoyle as he arrives during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 15, 2024.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images
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Before you criticize Amazon‘s plans to (probably) bring back The Apprentice, consider this: the company may be secretly saving America. Just, you know, not from a job standpoint.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon MGM Studios executives were “discussing” a potential reboot of The Apprentice, one of the earliest reality-competition series to break into our zeitgeist. The format is most remembered, of course, as the platform that brought Donald Trump to our living rooms; The Apprentice, which guaranteed the winner a high-paying job in the Trump organization, humanized its host and reestablished the former real-estate tycoon as a household name. Its success and our celebrity culture inadvertently made Trump a viable candidate for president of the United States, a role he’s now held twice — for those who still go by the old rules, the 22nd amendment says that’s the limit.
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With Trump in the nation’s top office through noon ET on Jan. 20, 2029 (and please God not a minute more), a new Apprentice would need a new host. Martha Stewart, who led a spinoff season following her 2004 release from prison, is not the answer. Nor is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who took over The Celebrity Apprentice when Trump was fired for comments he made about Mexican immigrants.
“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” Trump said in 2014 in announcing his bid for the Oval Office. “And these aren’t the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…they’re sending people that have lots of problems…they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
And the rest, unfortunately, is U.S. history.
The WSJ reported that one of the leading candidates to host a new version of The Apprentice is Donald Trump Jr., though that was apparently news to him. A person close to Trump Jr. tells The Hollywood Reporter that the president’s son was not aware he was being considered and only learned about it from reading the report. Dad’s a bit more up on things, or so he says.
“I’ve been hearing it,” Trump said when asked about the news, “Look, we’ve had a great success, 14 seasons, and The Apprentice was a tremendous success, so I’ve been hearing that, a little bit. So we’ll see what happens.”
As for Don Jr., his eldest son, taking over as host, Trump said it was “probably” a good choice.
(Admittedly, it makes some sense. The rotten apple didn’t fall far from the tree here.)
“He’s good, he’s a good guy, he’s probably good, he’s got a little charisma going, you need a little charisma for this, so we’ll see what happens,” Sr. said of Jr. “Yeah, they told me about it, we’ll see.”
OK, so that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement — but it sure as hell isn’t going to be Eric.
An Amazon spokesperson told THR on Wednesday, “Since our acquisition of MGM, we have had preliminary internal discussions about what’s next for The Apprentice as a property. The show is not in active development, and any reporting on details of the show or names of potential hosts would be purely speculative.”
Donald Trump in The Apprentice boardroom
NBC/Photofest
Trump (Sr.) had previously expressed hope that it would be his daughter, Ivanka, who one day takes over in The Apprentice boardroom. To that I say, sure, find a very full-time role for all the Trump kids: Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany, Barron, Jared Kushner, J.D. Vance.
Amazon has a $3 trillion company market cap — it can absorb this. Amazon has already been working overtime — and overspending — in what sure as hell looks like an effort to curry favor with the President. In 2024, the company spent $40 million to distrib