Former President Donald Trump talked about the importance of high ratings ― and how they allow people on TV to be ― in newly released audio from an interview he gave at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in November 2023.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee addressed the idea of returning to NBC — on which he’d previously hosted the business reality show “The Apprentice,” where each week he “fired” a contestant ― in one of six conversations with Variety editor and author Ramin Setoodeh.
The exchanges formed the basis of Setoodeh’s book, “Apprentice in Wonderland.” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace talked with Setoodeh and aired audio from his 2023 sitdown with Trump on Tuesday.
“So, if I went back to NBC right now to do something, they would do anything I wanted to do, showbiz-wise. I’m talking about,” Trump told Setoodeh. “Doing a show, anything I wanted to do right now, 100%.”
It’s because “that business” is “all about one thing, ratings,” he continued. “If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world.”
“There’s only one thing that matters, ratings,” Trump added. “You can be nice, or you can be mean. You can be evil. You can be horrible. You can be crude or elegant. There’s only one thing that matters, and that’s ratings and if you don’t have ratings, it doesn’t matter.”
Trump’s comment, an echo of his infamous “grab ’em” boast, “cut to the very core” of who he “really actually is”, said Wallace. “That the word elegant is in his vocabulary is the part that I can never unhear,” she added.
Trump appeared to suggest he was “being wooed” to return to TV even though “I found no evidence of that,” Setoodeh told Wallace.
“That’s the TV star in him,” Setoodeh explained. “He wants people to see him as a TV star. A successful TV star, and that’s the philosophy and way in which he views the world and the way he governs, if you could call it governing.”
In previous interviews promoting his book, Setoodeh recalled Trump’s “severe memory issues” including one time when the former president appeared to believe he still had official powers.