In May 2021, Donald J. Trump was broken. Four months earlier, his supporters had stormed the Capitol. He had left Washington disgraced, defeated and twice impeached. His party had abandoned him, if only temporarily, and he had been booted from his social media accounts. He was holed up in Trump Tower, raging.
He was visited by an entertainment journalist named Ramin Setoodeh, who told Trump he wanted to write a book not about the sordid events of the past four years, but about Trump’s decadent years before he entered politics, when Trump was just the star of “The Apprentice,” a reality show that had aired on NBC since 2004 and that, as Setoodeh told the former president, “changed television.”
Trump was sold. He gave reporters several lengthy, recorded interviews. “He was at his lowest point,” Mr. Setoodeh, 42, said over lunch in Manhattan’s West Village on Friday. “I think talking about ‘The Apprentice’ gave him some relief.”
Trump was so excited about the book that he offered to promote it at his rallies, and the vendors who accompanied him on his road shows would help promote it. “I think I could sell 10,000 copies at one rally,” Trump told Setudeh. “We’ll see what happens.”
Ultimately, it doesn’t seem to be working — at least not for Trump. “The Apprentice in Wonderland,” published Tuesday, portrays its protagonist as a lonely, sometimes maddening man who appears to crave political power but longs for a time when he was still accepted by other celebrities.
One moment he was bragging that Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016 (Rivers died in 2014), and the next he was telling Setoodeh he was stepping away to address “the whole Afghanistan issue.” Setoodeh happened to be interviewing Trump the same week President Biden withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It’s unclear what Trump meant by that.
Setoodeh spent three afternoons at Trump Tower, one day at Mar-a-Lago and interviewed Trump twice by phone, his last visit being in November. Setoodeh said he came away feeling that Trump, now 78, was in declining health.
“Trump was certainly sharper in his 60s when he was hosting The Apprentice, but he certainly had problems with short-term memory,” Setoodeh said. By the time I showed up for the second interview, just under three months later, the former president couldn’t seem to remember the first one, according to Setoodeh.
“President Trump knew who this person was during the interview process but, naturally, was not impressed as the ‘author’ is a nobody and inconsequential person,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said, adding that Setudeh “now, like so many other losers whose lives revolve around President Trump, has chosen to let his brain rot with Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
On social media, the campaign went on the offensive, threatening to release audio clips of Setoodeh’s interview with Trump in which he spoke fondly of Trump’s work as an entertainer.
Setoodeh said Trump enjoyed talking about “The Apprentice” much more than he did about the presidency. “He compares himself to Clint Eastwood and Marlon Brando and in many ways thinks of himself as an actor, a celebrity,” Setoodeh said. The 45th president also gossiped about Khloe Kardashian (“I never got along with Khloe. Khloe was arrested for DUI, did you know that?”), disgraced former CBS president Leslie Moonves (“He’s sitting in the Bel Air club right now and nobody cares”), Bette Midler (“I had her over to my apartment and now she says horrible things”), Dennis Rodman (“A pretty cool woman in a lot of ways and Kim Jong Un really liked him, it’s true”) and Taylor Swift (“I think she’s very beautiful. I think she’s a liberal. Maybe she doesn’t like Trump”).
“I was really struck by how much Trump still clings to celebrity culture and how important celebrities are to him,” said Setoodeh, who noted that Trump was “most excited” when talking about his theory that famous people who live in Beverly Hills would vote for Trump but wouldn’t admit it.
“What’s the benefit of having a secret ballot in Beverly Hills?” Setoodeh asked. “Why not have one in Ohio or Pennsylvania? But the reason he wants one in Beverly Hills is because it’s associated with show business. That’s the most important thing to him.”
One person Trump has refused to gossip about is “The Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett, even though Burnett had in 2016 condemned Trump’s candidacy for sowing “hatred, division and misogyny.”
“It’s interesting,” Setoodeh says, “Trump holds a grudge forever if anyone publicly speaks against him. Mark disowned Trump after the Access Hollywood tapes, but Trump credits Mark for The Apprentice, and he loves The Apprentice, so he’s never said anything negative about Mark Burnett.” (Burnett declined to be interviewed for this book.)
The day Setoodeh interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago last year coincidentally was the day Trump’s sister, Mary-Ann Trump Barry, died. Setoodeh thought the interview would be canceled, but it was actually postponed by an hour. Trump fondly recalled the day, saying that even his sister, a tough-as-nails federal judge, loved “The Apprentice.”
At Trump Tower, Setudeh played Trump a montage of scenes from the show, including three times over the years when Trump “fired” the show’s regular villain, Omarosa Manigault Newman. Trump later hired Newman to work in the White House, but she made secret audio recordings and later published a book, “Unhinged,” about her time in Trump’s administration, publicly denying that Trump was a racist.
About all of this, Trump seemed almost amused, telling Setoodeh: “When I hired her, I told everybody, ‘If you fire her, you’re going to have a lot of problems.’ But that’s OK. That’s life.”
Melania Trump appears in the book during a challenge where she recalls firing Rodman for misspelling her name as “Milania” on a poster for her new skincare line. “My name was spelled wrong and it was all over the place and nobody noticed,” she complained in the episode.
Setoodeh said Trump was ecstatic when recalling the exchange, saying: “How good is that TV? You can’t believe it.”
Trump has fallen into moments of near introspection when talking about simpler times, such as when he inadvertently admitted that he “lost the election” (but quickly added that “they Said “Do you think I would have become president without ‘The Apprentice’? I do. But some people say no. A lot of smart people say no.”
Trump said that what he ultimately learned about show business during his years on the show was this: “It’s all about ratings. And with ratings you can be the meanest, nastiest person in the world.”
