This morning, Slate published a series of recollections from crew members on Donald Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice The revelations therein are largely unsurprising: Trump is a misogynist, a skinflint, and a generally objectionable human being. There’s one passage that’s of particular interest, though — it involves a former “midlevel producer” on the show recalling Cheeto Jesus‘s fondness for keeping a certain contestant on the show despite his demonstrable ineptitude.
“There was a fat contestant who was a buffoon and a fuckup. And he would fuck up week after week, and the producers would figure that he’d screwed up so badly that Trump would have to fire him. But Trump kept deciding to fire someone else. The producers had to scramble because of course Trump can never be seen to make a bad call on the show, so we had to re-engineer the footage to make a different contestant look bad. Later, I heard a producer talk to him, and Trump said, ‘Everybody loves a fat guy. People will watch if you have a funny fat guy around. Trust me, it’s good for ratings.’”
If you thought there might be a parallel between this and a certain New Jersey governor who now appears to be Trump’s manservant, then don’t feel bad, because you’re not the only one: “I look at Chris Christie now,” says the unnamed producer, “and I swear that’s what’s happening.” As if this election wasn’t flat-out bleak enough already, there you have it.