Tag: The Apprentice

Trump commutes sentence of former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he had commuted the prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was impeached and removed from office in 2009 on corruption charges, and pardoned former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik.

A federal spokesman said Tuesday night that Blagojevich had been released and was no longer in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The news came hours after Trump signed an executive order granting a full pardon to former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. related to a decades-old corruption charge, one of nearly a dozen pardons and commutations the White House announced Tuesday.

Another big name on the list was that of Michael Milken, the former junk bond trader who pleaded guilty in 1990 to racketeering and securities fraud. The man who prosecuted Milken was one of the people who advocated for his pardon, according to the White House — Rudy Giuliani, one of the president’s personal lawyers.

Giuliani also advocated for a pardon for Kerik, who was Giuliani’s hand-picked police commissioner when he was mayor of New York. Kerik was sentenced in 2010 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud.

Blagojevich, 63, was sentenced in 2011 to 14 years in federal prison on corruption charges related to his solicitation of bribes in an attempt to “sell” the Senate seat Barack Obama left open after he was elected president.

Trump, who has repeatedly floated the idea of pardoning Blagojevich, told reporters that he had received “a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence.”

“He served eight years in jail, a long time,” Trump told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. “I don’t know him very well. I met him a couple of times. He was on for a short while on ‘The Apprentice’ some years ago. He seems like a very nice person. I don’t know him.”

Trump said “many people” thought the sentence was unfair. “He’ll be able to go back home to his family,” he added.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, had been at the low-security Federal Correctional Institute in Englewood, Colorado. He’d been a contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “The Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010.

The president said in August that he was “very strongly” considering giving Blagojevich a reprieve.

“I’m thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One then.

“He’s been in jail for seven years, over a phone call where nothing happens … over a phone call where, you know, he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it was braggadocio, you would say. I would think that there have been many politicians — I’m not one of them, by the way — that have said a lot worse over telephones,” he added.

In one wiretapped phone call, Blagojevich said of Obama’s Senate seat: “I’ve got this thing and it’s f—— golden. And I’m just not giving it up for f—— nothing.”

The current Democratic governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, took to Twitter to blast the pardon.

“President Trump has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time,” Pritzker tweeted.

Prosecutors said Blagojevich and others working for him began “a pattern of racketeering activity” soon after he took office in 2002, using the powers of the governorship in “exchange for financial benefits for themselves and others.”

He was arrested in late 2008 on allegations that he had tried to profit from selling off Obama’s open Senate seat, and he was impeached in January 2009 after he refused to resign.

Blagojevich was convicted in federal court in Chicago later that year on one of 24 felony counts — lying to the FBI about the extent of his involvement in campaign fundraising. Jurors deadlocked on the other counts.

At his 2011 retrial, he was convicted of three separate shakedown attempts — one involving a children’s hospital, one involving a racetrack and one involving the Senate seat.

In between his trials, he tried to rehabilitate his image and signed up as a contestant on “The Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010. He was “fired” after four episodes after bungling a Harry Potter presentation.

[NBC News]

Trump says he’s ‘very strongly’ considering commuting Rod Blagojevich’s sentence

President Trump on Wednesday said he’s “very strongly” considering commuting the prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), who is serving 14 years on federal corruption charges.

“I thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly,” the president told reporters on Air Force One en route back to Washington, D.C., after visiting the sites of recent mass shootings.

“His wife I think is fantastic and I’m thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly,” Trump added. “I think it’s enough, seven years.”

Blagojevich was removed from office in 2009 and was later convicted of a wide array of corruption charges, including trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after he was elected president in 2008. The former governor began serving a 14-year prison sentence in 2012.

“I’ve got this thing, and it’s f—— golden. I’m just not giving it up for f—— nothing,” Blagojevich said of Obama’s Senate seat in a recorded phone call.

Trump on Wednesday downplayed Blagojevich’s conduct on the call, chalking it up to “braggadocio.”

“He’s been in jail for seven years over a phone call where nothing happens — over a phone call which he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it was braggadocio you would say,” Trump said. “I would think that there have been many politicians — I’m not one of them by the way — that have said a lot worse over the telephone.”

Trump noted that former FBI Director James Comey — a frequent target of criticism for the president — worked the case to convict Blagojevich. Comey was the FBI’s attorney general at the time of the case.

The president floated a commutation for Blagojevich last year, but has yet to take action. The two men knew each previously from when the former governor appeared on “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Numerous Illinois political figures have in recent years voiced support for commuting Blagojevich’s sentence, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D) and Rev. Jesse Jackson.

[The Hill]

Trump Rips NBC for ‘Negative’ Coverage: ‘I Made a Lot of Money’ for Them With The Apprentice

President Donald Trump sat down with C-SPAN’s Steve Scully for an interview that ended up touching on the media in a few different ways.

As Scully asked the president about his Twitter habits and whether he regrets it, Trump talked about using Twitter as a tool to communicate directly with the people and hit back at the “dishonest” news.

He called CNN “100 percent negative” and then went on a tear against NBC:

“NBC is negative. I made a lot of money for NBC with The Apprentice. It was a tremendous success at a time when they didn’t have any successes. But they forgot about that very quickly. And they wanted to extend me… I wanted to run for president, I think I’ve done a great job.”

[Mediaite]

Media

Trump Claims Apprentice Producer Called Him to Deny There’s an N-Word Tape: ‘Deranged’ Omarosa ‘Made it Up’

President Donald Trump is continuing his online rampage against his former Apprentice protege-turned-administration critic, Omarosa Manigault Newman.

In his latest tweets, Trump claimed that he spoke to Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, who supposedly said no tapes exist of him using racist language between takes on his show. He’s also calling Manigault-Newman “wacky and deranged” while grumbling that the “fake news” is talking to her now that she has turned against him.

Even though political observers have noted how Manigault Newman’s credibility is questionable at best, she has captivated the media over the last few days with the salacious claims of her new book, and her secret White House recordings of Trump and his staff. One of the claims Manigault Newman elevated, the one Trump is referring to, is the old rumor that the president used the N-word, among other racist comments.

[Mediaite]

Trump Says Schwarzenegger Was Fired From ‘Apprentice.’

A line from President Trump’s speech last Tuesday to the joint session of Congress came back to haunt him on social media Saturday morning: “The time for trivial fights is behind us.”

Apparently, in Trump’s view, long-simmering feuds regarding his old reality show “The Apprentice” don’t qualify as trivial.

On Friday the show’s new host, Arnold Schwarzenegger, released a statement saying he would not return for a second season. “I loved every second of working with NBC and Mark Burnett. Everyone — from the celebrities to the crew to the marketing department — was a straight 10, and I would absolutely work with all of them again on a show that doesn’t have this baggage.”

Schwarzenegger later explained that the “baggage” to which he was referring is Trump. “With Trump being involved in the show, people have a bad taste and don’t want to participate as a spectator or as a sponsor or in any other way support the show,” he told Empire magazine.

The tweeter in chief woke up early Saturday at his Florida estate to provide his own version of events. After a stream of tweets claiming that former president Barack Obama had tapped the phones at Trump Tower, the president weighed in on “The Apprentice.”

Naturally, the Terminator wasn’t going to let that stand. He fired his own shot across the bow.

Of course, these salvos are just the latest in a lengthy back-and-forth between the two. At the National Prayer Breakfast in February, the president asked his audience to “pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings.” Schwarzenegger quickly responded with a video suggesting they change places: “You take over TV, because you’re such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job. And then people can finally sleep comfortably again.”

By midmorning Saturday, both men had moved on to other activities. Schwarzenegger was at a fitness expo. Trump headed to a golf course.

And sixth-graders everywhere rolled their eyes in exasperation.

(h/t Washington Post)

Trump Opens National Prayer Breakfast Asking to Pray for ‘The Apprentice’ Ratings

At an event attended by thousands from countries around the world, President Donald Trump opened his Thursday remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast with talk of TV ratings.

The president noted his “tremendous success” as star of the reality show “Celebrity Apprentice.” Trump hosted the show for 14 seasons, and followed up the fact of his success by noting the show’s drop in ratings since his departure.

“We know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster,” Trump said. Actor and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has since rebooted the show.

“And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings,” he joked.

The Austria native was quick to respond to the president’s remarks, suggesting they swap jobs:

Trump Once Proposed a Race-Based Season of “The Apprentice”

The Celebrity Apprentice

Donald Trump once floated the idea of a race-based season of his hit reality television show “The Apprentice,” where teams would be divided based on the color of their skin.

Back in 2005, ahead of filming his fifth season as a host of the “The Apprentice,” Trump said he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites.”

Trump, currently the Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee, made the comments on his now-defunct radio show. His proposal was reported by Entertainment Weekly in 2005 and resurfaced by a Buzzfeed News report.

Trump, who said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the fourth season of “The Apprentice,” later added of the racialized premise: “Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”

Trump acknowledged at the time, however, that “not everybody thinks it’s a good idea.”

Trump’s idea came shortly after Omarosa Manigualt, an African American woman, became a popular contestant on the first season of “The Apprentice” in 2004. Manigault, now an avid Trump supporter, later appeared on subsequent iterations of the show, including “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

The idea — which he had also raised on Howard Stern’s show a couple months earlier, according to a 2005 Entertainment Weekly article — drew an avalanche of coverage, commentary, and question-mark headlines at the time.

“Will next Apprentice play race card?” asked UPI.

“Will The Apprentice become a battle of the races?” mused MSNBC.com.

“The Apprentice” never took up Trump’s proposal to cast the show by race.

(h/t CBS News, Buzzfeed)

Reality

Donald Trump has run a campaign based on racism and racist language.

Tara Dowdell, a black communications consultant who appeared on season 3 of The Apprentice had an excellent quote that sums up this entire story:

Best-case scenario, it was huge blind spot. Worst-case scenario, it showed [Trump’s] willingness to exploit race and be divisive — to do anything to promote himself. The presidency can’t be one crazy, ill-advised publicity stunt after another.