Trump ‘mulling return to reality TV’ after leaving White House

Outgoing president reportedly considering Apprentice comeback after quitting office

Donald Trump is reportedly planning to return to reality TV following his departure from the White House in January.

Prior to seeking elected office, Mr Trump famously hosted the NBC show The Apprentice for 14 seasons between 2004 and 2015 as well as its sister show The Celebrity Apprentice for seven seasons.

Produced by Mark Burnett, the series gave the New York real estate mogul’s career a second act after his Atlantic City casino businesses had collapsed in the early 1990s, allowing him to project an image of corporate success that convinced many he would make a popular and effective candidate for the presidency.

“As he begins his final weeks in office, amid a winter surge in coronavirus deaths, President Donald Trump has mentioned to confidants that he’s thinking about resurrecting The Apprentice or The Celebrity Apprentice reality TV show,” The Daily Beast reports, citing “two people with direct knowledge of the situation and another person close to the president”.

The report continues: “Among his inner orbit of family, political aides, and advisers, it is yet another sign that, despite the president’s public insistence that he won the 2020 election, he recognises that he has lost and that his ongoing legal crusade to cancel Joe Biden’s victory will come up short.”

Mr Trump’s challenges to November’s election result, which saw him lose the Electoral College to Mr Biden by 306-232 and the popular vote by some 7m ballots, certainly appear to have run out of road, after the outcome was certified on Monday and the US Supreme Court threw out a last-stand lawsuit brought by the attorney general of Texas last week.

The president nevertheless refuses to publicly give up the fight, pushing conspiracy theories on Twitter and even suggesting Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensburger should be jailed for failing to help him overturn the outcome in their state.

Precisely how Mr Trump will occupy his time out of office is not yet known, although he is expected to relocate to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, where his wife Melania has been spotted visiting local high schools for their teenage son Barron. 

The move has already been opposed by the Trumps’ neighbours in Palm Beach, who are reluctant to see their peace and quiet disrupted by his return.

Whether American television audiences have any more of an appetite for Mr Trump - and could take him seriously declaring “You’re fired!” after losing an election and overseeing one of the most chaotic administrations in political history - remains to be seen.

He certainly has a financial imperative to revive his badly-damaged brand, with The New York Times reporting in September that the Trump Organisation, which manages his international empire of loss-making hotels and golf resorts, has hundreds of millions of dollars in loans due for repayment over the next four years.

As president, Mr Trump brought several aspects of The Apprentice with him to Washington, including former contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman as a West Wing aide plus the habits of engaging in almost-weekly firings and measuring his success in terms of ratings.