Why NBC refused Donald Trump’s request for daughter Ivanka to replace him on ‘The Apprentice’

nypost.com:

Fire away.Before Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States, he was the host of a little show called “The Apprentice.”The NBC business-competition show ran for 15 seasons, with the entrepreneur helming the round table from 2004 until 2017.Trump left the show in 2015 so he could focus on his presidential campaign — a race he won a year later.

In author Ramin Setoodeh’s forthcoming book, “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass,” Trump reveals that he wanted his daughter Ivanka Trump to sub in for him on the show. “I said, ‘The best person to hire would be Ivanka Trump,’” the politician recalled. “I didn’t press it.

But I felt Ivanka would have been by far the best person you could hire.”“NBC didn’t like it, because it became like a family thing,” he went on. “But I said, ‘There’s nobody you’re going to hire that will come even close to Ivanka.’ They said, ‘Huh’ … And then they came back with Arnold Schwarzenegger.”Setoodeh, who is Variety’s co-editor-in-chief, looks back on the TV show and how it helped shape Trump’s political career.

According to Variety, “Apprentice in Wonderland” takes its basis from many hours of interviews with Trump after his White House exit in January 2021, as well as talks with his advisers on the show, George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher, NBC executives and even ex-contestants. “The Apprentice” followed a crop of candidates each season who competed for a position in one of the organizations run by the host.Trump was later fired from NBC during his campaign after he made racist remarks regarding Mexican immigrants.Following the “Home Alone 2” star’s exit, former California Gov.