Call it one of Ivanka Trump’s “sliding doors” moments.
Before his father, Donald Trump, officially left his hit reality TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president in 2015, he pushed NBC to hire him to replace him as star of the show, according to a new report from Variety.
“I said, ‘The best person to hire would be Ivanka,'” the former president said, according to a new book, “Apprentice in Wonderland,” as Variety reported. “I said, ‘You’re not going to hire anyone who’s even close to Ivanka.'”
The book, written by Ramin Setoodeh, looks back on Trump’s decade on a competitive job search show, playing a version of himself who is a savvy businessman and who fired failed candidates with his catchphrase: ” You are fired ! Ivanka often appeared on the show as one of her father’s “counsel advisors”.
As Trump urges NBC to make Ivanka the new star of “The Apprentice,” she may wonder what course her life might have taken if she had been on the show, instead of joining her father on the campaign trail in 2015 and 2016.
It was widely reported that the once-popular model, designer and business executive lost friends and her seat at the top of New York’s liberal high society when she campaigned for her father. During the 2016 election campaign, the famous real estate developer made disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants, was accused of authoritarian impulses and became embroiled in the “Access Hollywood” controversy weeks before the elections.
Ivanka Trump’s reputation suffered further after her father’s election. She has joined his White House and refused to speak out on some of his most controversial statements and policies, including his false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. As a senior presidential advisor, Ivanka Trump has regularly been accused of entitlement, corruption, selfishness and “complicity”. When Trump lost the election in 2020 — and Ivanka lost her White House job — she reportedly realized that she and husband Jared Kushner would be shunned by old friends if they returned to New York, according to Vanity Fair. They eventually moved to Miami with their three children.
Variety also reported that Trump’s two oldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, were in talks to star in the Ivanka-led “The Apprentice.” In an interview for “Apprentice in Wonderland,” Eric Trump told the author, “It was going to be all three of us. They talked about it for a little while.
But Trump also told the book’s author that NBC didn’t like how the show was becoming “a family affair,” Variety reported. So it’s unclear whether NBC would have followed Trump’s idea that his daughter had enough star power alone to replace him.
Ultimately, Ivanka Trump lost any opportunity to star in her own TV show. The Trump family’s relationship with “The Apprentice” ended when NBC cut ties with his father after he launched his presidential campaign with a speech calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who bring “drugs » and “crime”.
In 2017, NBC revived “The Apprentice” franchise with “The New Celebrity Apprentice,” starring action star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The show premiered in January 2017, before Trump’s inauguration, but was canceled after one season due to low ratings.
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