Gene Folkes was just being fired from” The Apprentice” and was having a break from a job with a staff member at a bar in the Trump Tower’s lobby. He was angry — and not just at having been kicked off the real present after its sun, Donald Trump, had delivered his phrase:” You’re fired”.
Folkes, one of the two Black contestants chosen for the 2010 season, was insulted by Trump’s extended board tirade and accusations of illiteracy against him.
As the staff part, a Black woman who worked as a participant manager, consoled him, Trump unexpectedly appeared at the table.
” He came up and he asked me:’ Is this your girl? Because you two may make a really great partners, you both have the same history,'” Folkes told The Associated Press.
Gene Folkes, a previous participant on” The Apprentice”, is photographed in a garden in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, in New York. ( AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah )
Trump was quietly reminded by the applicant boss that she had worked for him. Therefore, according to Folkes, Trump made a comment that was akin to what he said in the office.
” He said once,’ It’s not like I used the N- term,’ and therefore he walked away, and that was that”, said Folkes, a New York- based advisor, podcast host and U. S. Air Force veteran.
Clean allegations about Trump’s disrespectful behavior toward Black individuals inside the Midtown tower, which launched his present and political career, are surfacing as he attempts to win over African American voters in his third campaign for president. Concerns remain as to whether any of that conduct was recorded.
What to know about the 2024 Poll
Former” The Apprentice” producer Bill Pruitt claimed in a recent report that Trump actually used the racist slur to refer to Kwame Jackson, a Black contestant who won the show’s first season. Trump’s campaign’s campaign spokesperson has strongly refuted the claim as being socially inspired. President Joe Biden’s plan, however, spotlighted Pruitt’s profile on social advertising.
Trump, who hosted” The Apprentice” from 2004 to 2015, has long denied such claims and called former contestants criticizing him “failing wannabes” motivated by greed. However, he has been tarnished by racism allegations in both his professional and social life, from a 1973 discrimination lawsuit brought against his real estate company to his efforts to carry out the murder trials of five Black and Latino youths who were later cleared of rape accusations, to his yearslong support of the plot concept that President Barack Obama was not the country’s first Black president.
The former Republican president’s first campaign in 2016 was blighted by allegations of his behavior on” The Apprentice” and in other shows he made while working for NBC, most notably in footage where he claimed he could sexually assault women and escape punishment because he was a” star” and that he was a” star.” MGM Studios, which bought the manufacturing company that made the show, has since been acquired by Amazon.
Trump’s television job is still a major factor in his history and political increase, nearly a decade after he left his fact TV part to run for president. Before Trump launched his first battle from the entrance of the building, it presented Trump Tower to tens of millions of people as a symbol of power and success. After being found guilty of 34 criminal counts in a calm money scheme to control the 2016 election, he made his first appearance last week in the same lobby.
According to Joel Penney, a professor at Montclair State University who studies the intersection of pop culture and politics,” The Apprentice” is probably underrated as a source of that kind of image construction. ” There’s anyone who was probably compete on the level of brand recognition, brand reputation, that kind of familiarity”.
THE Jobs OF NBC AND AMAZON
The Apprentice and its storylines, which featured people from all walks of life and eventually celebrities who competed in manufactured business contests to win Trump’s favour and possibly a job with his business, were on television for more than a decade.
Numerous cast and crew members have signed non-disclosure agreements, which severely restrict their ability to reveal what transpired inside Trump Tower or any outtakes featuring the ex-president. The network that broadcasts the show as well as its producer have also declined to release unaired footage. Some people said they wondered how contractual agreements might have protected Trump from backlash about politically volatile comments after the AP reached out to more than two dozen former crew members and contestants about Trump’s behind-the-scenes behavior over the past week.
Folkes said he thinks that Trump’s conversations inside the bar were recorded because he was still using a microphone.
Folkes wrote about his time on the show after his firing in October 2010. He said he soon got a call from NBC executives. In accordance with a document provided by Folkes, the network’s then-vp for legal affairs, Shelly Tremain, sent him a cease-and-desist order in early November, and threatened to sue the network for$ 1 million if he continued to discuss his participation in the series or violated his “application agreement.”
Folkes fired back to Tremain’s team in an email, saying his portrayal on the show was “unfortunate, inaccurate, stereotyping being applied to a member of a protected class”, according to a copy of the message viewed by the AP. I have no desire to make any comments in public about Mr. Trump. I recommend that you watch the entire boardroom scene of episode 5 for a very clear picture of the false portrayal and stereotyping.
Folkes claimed that the network did grant him additional therapy sessions following his firing, which he claimed helped him recover from the negative publicity he experienced as a contestant. Tremain did not respond to a message and NBC declined to comment on him.
” After a decade of ( military ) service, I can take a lot of stress. It’s not like,’ Oh, he fired me and hurt my feelings,'” Folkes said. ” When I say I am offended, that is a high bar to cross”.
According to a statement from Trump spokesman Steven Cheung,” these completely fabricated accusations” have already been debated and thoroughly refuted, with all of them claiming to be tied to campaign politics.
They are bringing up old fake stories from the past because they are desperate, he said,” now that Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats are losing the election, and President Trump continues to rule.”
Folkes previously criticized Trump’s candidacy and his remarks toward and about female cast and crew members in an AP investigation that was released in October 2016. After reading the AP story,” Access Hollywood” producers said they dug into their own show’s archive, uncovering a 2005 tape in which Trump made lewd remarks about being sexually aggressive toward women.
Some Republicans called for Trump to resign a month before the election in response to the tape. He did n’t — and won. However, many of his rivals have remained in the midst of pressure on” The Apprentice” producers to release their archives, partly because they think a tape of Trump using the racist slur is available.
MGM, the entertainment industry’s triumphant, announced in 2016 that it owned the archive of the reality TV show and that its contractual obligations prevented it from releasing any unaired, archived material at will. The online retailer Amazon finalized its purchase of MGM, one of the oldest studios in Hollywood, in 2022. Amazon MGM Studios declined to comment.
Executive producer of the show, Mark Burnett, has also stated that he does n’t have the authority or right to make the show’s footage public. NBC has stated that it only obtained the broadcast rights to the series footage from Burnett.
A NEW ACCOUNT
Pruitt described a meeting with Trump in a Slate article published last week, where he famously would dismiss contestants.
According to Pruitt’s account, one of Trump’s company’s managers suggested picking Jackson over Bill Rancic, the other remaining contestant and a white man. Pruitt writes that after a debate over Jackson’s performance on the show, Trump winced before questioning whether America would accept a Black man winning, using the racist slur.
Pruitt said he was speaking out now because his non-disclosure agreement, which could result in a$ 5 million fine if broken, expired this year. He claimed that the conversation was recorded and that he had the best of intentions when he recalled every quote from his article.
He is about to run for president of the United States, according to Pruitt, and I heard him use a phrase that, if more people had heard about it, should have permanently removed him from politics. ” Anyone who is capable of using it should n’t be leading the country”.
Pruitt’s claim that Trump used the slur was refuted by the Trump campaign. ” Prove it”, wrote Cheung, the campaign spokesperson, on the X platform, adding that Biden’s allies were “peddling” the story “because Biden is hemorrhaging support from Black Americans”. Since taking office, the Democratic president’s support among Black voters has drastically decreased.
In 2005, a year after Pruitt claims Trump used the slur, the former president proposed a” Blacks” versus “whites” version of” The Apprentice” on” The Howard Stern Show”, telling listeners he was considering creating an episode pitting “nine Blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, strong, beautiful people”.
In an interview, Jackson said Trump never said the slur to his face. However, he claimed Pruitt’s account and the conversation over an alleged Trump recording raised questions about how unpopular the country is as of 2024.
” The bigger issue for me is none of this really matters because America is comfortable with both overt and covert racism,” he said. What will that change if there is a smoking gun that reads” Trump called me an N-word” and a tape plays tomorrow? How will that make a difference”? said Jackson, president of his own brand marketing, diversity and inclusion consulting firm.
POLITICAL PRESSURE
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, argues Biden’s immigration and economic policies have deprived Black communities of jobs and resources. He and his allies have suggested he can cut into Biden’s margins with Black voters, long a core Democratic constituency.
He has also argued that his criminal convictions have helped him, and he suggested to a predominantly Black audience in February that African Americans have a stronger relationship with him because of his indictments.
Biden has cited a number of benefits for Black Americans, including more funding for historically Black colleges and universities, forgiveness of federal student loan debt, and pardons for federal marijuana possession charges. His campaign has also attempted to highlight Trump’s past.
On Monday, Biden’s campaign posted a TikTok video featuring coverage of Pruitt’s allegations, as well as the affirmation of Omarosa Manigault Newman, who went from a show contestant to White House aide to a Trump critic, that she had heard a tape of Trump using the slur.
” Donald Trump is exactly who we all knew he was — a lifelong racist”, a woman says in the TikTok. Donald Trump was kicked out of the White House by “black voters in 2020, and we’re going to do it again this November.”
One of two Black contestants in the fourth season of” The Apprentice,” Marshawn Evans Daniels, claimed she had never heard of Trump using racist language on set.
” ‘ The Apprentice’ was a baptism in the highest levels of business and I was always praised”, said Evans Daniels, an attorney, author and consultant. I’ve never had a negative experience, but it does n’t typically occur while you’re in the room.
FILE- Donald Trump, right, speaks to Randal Pinkett, left, the winner of the fourth season of Trump’s reality television show” The Apprentice”, at the sixth season auditions at Trump Tower in New York, Friday, March 24, 2006. ( AP Photo/Stuart Ramson, File )
Winner Randal Pinkett received a job working for Trump that same season. Pinkett, who is also Black, claimed Trump asked him to share his title with a white contestant and treated him differently than other previous winners.
What Donald did to me was racially inappropriate, according to Pinkett, the current CEO of an international consulting firm and a former Trump critic. ” If I do not give him the benefit of doubt, which I do not, it was racist. And it does n’t come as a surprise to me that he would use the N-word.
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Burke reported from San Francisco and Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina.
