President-elect Donald Trump will remain an executive producer on the reality television show “The Apprentice” even after takes office next month, and could continue earning a profit from the show, it was revealed on Thursday.His involvement was confirmed by a representative for MGM, the company that owns the show — which is broadcast on NBC — and Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email that “Mr. Trump has a big stake in the show and conceived of it with Mark Burnett.”
Trump apparently won’t be in front of the camera, but Variety reports the president-elect will likely receive a “per-episode fee,” valued in “the low five-figures, at a minimum.”It’s unclear if Trump intends to give that money to charity, though it’s worth noting for context that in recent years, Trump’s “Apprentice”-related charitable claims proved to be untrue.By way of a defense, I expected the president-elect’s team to say that Trump’s role as an executive producer would largely be a formality: his name would appear in the credits, and he might get a check, but Americans shouldn’t expect Trump to do any real work associated with the reality show.Except, that’s not what Team Trump is saying.On the contrary, Kellyanne Conway appeared on CNN this morning and effectively argued that if President Obama can go golfing, then Donald Trump can be the executive producer of a television program. TPM reported:
Co-host Alisyn Camerota noted to Conway that any time Trump spends working for “The Apprentice” is time away from his presidential duties.”Well, okay, but were we so concerned about the hours and hours and hours spent on the golf course of the current president?” Conway asked in response. “I mean, the presidents have a right to do things in their spare time or their leisure time. Nobody objects to that.”
So, Donald Trump will be the executive producer of a reality show as … a hobby?The right’s fascination with Obama’s golf game has always been inexplicable to me — plenty of his presidential predecessors golfed, and it was never the subject of quite this much interest — but the fact remains that it’s a pretty common leisure activity, for which Obama was never paid. By all appearances, the president simply golfed to unwind.But to hear Conway tell it, Trump’s television work — in addition to the time he takes to golf — will be what he does in his “spare time.”It’s a shame Inauguration Day is still six weeks away; I’ve already run out of adjectives to describe stuff like this.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."