Whether or not talk of a revival of The Apprentice at Amazon and a generational handover is real, speculation finally has made its way to the Oval Office.
The former host of the NBC competition series and its Celebrity Apprentice spinoff was asked Thursday what he thought about bringing the mothership show back and whispers of Donald Trump Jr. as the new frontman.
“Well, I’ve been hearing it, ” Donald Trump said of the Apprentice revival talk reported by the Wall Street Journal late Wednesday. POTUS was responding to a question from Fox News‘ Peter Doocy after an Executive Order signing ceremony today at the White House. “So I’ve been hearing that you know a little bit.”
Warming up to what long has been seen as Trump’s favorite part of his varied (to put it mildly) career, the onetime Emmy nominee added: “We had a great success, 14 seasons, and The Apprentice was a tremendous success. So we’ll see what happens.”
As for his eldest son taking on the big “You’re fired!” chair on any new version of the Apprentice from the House of Bezos, Trump offered a lukewarm endorsement. “He’s a good guy,” the 79-year-old said of his 48-year-old son, who appeared on the O.G. Apprentice as a judge and on-air adviser from 2006-15. “He’d be probably good,” his father added today with what may or may not have been sarcasm. “He’s got a little charisma going. You need a little charisma for that sucker.”
“Yeah, they told me about it, we’ll see,” the elder Trump concluded about a possible new life for the now-MGM TV-owned property created in 2004 by Mark Burnett.
Donald Trump and Mark Burnett on The Celebrity Apprentice set in 2010
Bill Tompkins/Getty Images
While news of a new Apprentice seemed to catch almost everyone outside the Rupert Murdoch-owned WSJ by surprise, sources close to Amazon have cautioned about reading too much into any return to the boardroom any time soon.
Whatever discussion that may have been about the show was more in the standard vein of Amazon execs looking over IP that the company owns and kicking a tire or two at most. “Since our acquisition of MGM, we have had preliminary internal discussions about what’s next for The Apprentice as a property,” an Amazon spokesperson says. “The show is not in active development, and any reporting on details of the show or names of potential hosts would be purely speculative.”
One individual close to events floated that if the idea of more Apprentice came from anywhere, it was probably the Trumps or someone in their inner circle. “That show is everything to him, Burnett brought him back from obscurity,” the source told Deadline. “The kids are always jockeying to get his attention, so maybe this was that.”
In that context, Don Jr. did better than most today.
Exiting The Apprentice in 2015 for his first successful run at the Oval Office, the elder Trump was less than generous in his appraisal of Arnold Schwarzenegger as his replacement and the host of the 16th and final season. Instead of the Terminator star and ex-California governor, Trump stumped for his eldest daughter and longtime on-air sidekick Ivanka to get the gig.