Despite his well–publicized issues with Saturday Night Live, it looks like Donald Trump is still a big fan of NBC in general. And why shouldn’t he be? Perhaps even more than Fox News or CNN, NBC has done a wonderful job promoting Trump’s political agenda over the past year, first with his SNL hosting gig last November, then Jimmy Fallon’s extremely cutesy interview in September, and of course the whole mess with Law & Order: SVU’s Trump-inspired episode, which the network delayed into next year after he won the election—a not-at-all suspicious move that certainly doesn’t give off any particularly chilling vibes.
Now, just in case that wasn’t enough to secure the peacock a place in Trump’s good graces, Variety is now reporting that Trump is going to retain his executive producer credit on the new, Arnold Schwarzenegger-hosted version of Celebrity Apprentice. So, not only is NBC specifically bringing back the TV show that made Trump into a reality star in the first place, but he’s still going to be making money off of it and getting his name on TV every week. Variety says his pay—which will reportedly be “in the low five-figures”—will come through Celebrity Apprentice producers MGM and not NBC, but that hardly makes up for the level of absurdity that is on display here.
Also, on a related note, Celebrity Apprentice creator Mark Burnett reportedly met with Trump this week about the inauguration ceremony, meaning the whole thing might actually be an outrageous TV event. This comes after Burnett released a statement in October denouncing the “hatred, division, and misogyny” that was part of Trump’s campaign, but nobody makes money by having a backbone in Trump’s America. Right, NBC?