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.
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 distribute the critically-destroyed documentary Melania, which followed the first lady over the first weeks of her husband’s second term. Melania Trump personally pocketed roughly $30 million of the check, the WSJ reported, and Amazon paid more than 3x the doc’s next-highest offer.
Cut a few more checks and put the whole damn administration on holding deals through 2028. Better yet, 2032. I’ll even do the ideating for you: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (Fox & Friends Weekend) gets an entire platform for his post-Fox News era. It’s worked for Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy was on The Real World: Boston. Throw him on Beast Games or some shit.
Robert Kennedy Jr. gets some Bear Grylls-esque outdoorsman show where he performs penectomies on all sorts of nocturnal mammals. His wife Cheryl Hines can act, so that’s a potential twofer right there.
Linda McMahon cannot act, but she’s sure been forced to try in some ridiculous soap-opera storylines on WWE programming. Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner, played nine seasons in the NFL — get that man in the booth for Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football. Even Secretary of Energy Chris Wright’s official White House bio boasts he’s “had multiple appearances on network TV, documentaries, and podcasts.” Surely you could find a use for him since he’s not doing shit about gas prices anyway.
Listen, enough commas and this could actually work. Each of them already spends their days jockeying for 45/47’s attention and affection, and the only thing the Trump family patriarch values as much as power is TV ratings. If we can distract the whole hive with a few first-look deals, perhaps we can restore a semblance of self-control to the Control Room.
Any Normal Human 2028.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
#Good #Idea #Amazon #Give #Trump #Kids #Shows
