There will be no more “Apprentice.” After an activist pressure campaign, NBCU (the corporate behemoth borne of the NBC-Universal merger) is ending its business relationship with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The reason? Trump’s comments slamming illegal immigrants in his campaign kickoff speech. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported Monday:
"Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCU is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump"
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 29, 2015
CNN, of course, recently ran an op-ed from the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts urging NBC to get rid of Trump. What were the comments in question?
“When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity,” Trump said earlier this month. “And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me… When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They are bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Trump was planning to hold off on doing a new season of his NBC reality show “The Apprentice” to run for president. But now his entire relationship with NBC is gone.
“In all fairness, I don’t want it to sound trivial, NBC renewed ‘The Apprentice,’ because we had a great season last season,” Trump said this weekend, claiming that NBC executives wanted him to do another season rather than run for president. “And they would love me not to be doing this, I will tell you right now. I mean the top people come to my office and they said, ‘Please do this.'”
Trump’s “The Apprentice” and its spinoff version “The Celebrity Apprentice” have been airing on NBC since January 2004.