Donald Trump Fired: NBC Cuts Ties To ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ Star After Controversial Remarks [Updated]
NBC is now telling presidential candidate Donald Trump he’s fired after the Celebrity Apprentice head made controversial comments about Mexicans during his announcement speech.
Trump has refused to back down on the comments he made, and now it seems it’s officially costing him some of his entertainment work.
As TVLine reports, NBC has released a statement sharing that NBCUniversal is ending all of its business relationships with Donald Trump. The statement says that the company believes that dignity and respect for all people are central to their values. NBCUniversal decided after Trump’s recent commentary regarding immigrants that they need to end their work with the controversial figure.
The network statement comes just a couple of days after Donald Trump doubled down on his immigration comments in an interview with CNN. Trump stands by his assertions that Mexico is sending all the people they don’t want to the United States, including plenty of rapists and killers, and he’s got a plan to deal with it. The comments immediately generated a great deal of outrage, including some withdrawing from participation in Trump’s Miss USA pageant.
Univision has canceled its plans to air both the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, both of which are co-owned by Donald. However, Trump says there’s a big lawsuit on the way for the network over this. Trump claims that Univision is breaching the contract they recently signed with him and he’s made numerous other threats regarding libel and lawsuits to others as well.
Though NBC initially held back on saying much about Trump’s divisive comments, there was definitely pressure put on them to cut their ties to the presidential candidate. A petition on Change.org popped up urging NBC to take a definitive stance and more than 200,000 people signed the petition.
Though NBC had already renewed Celebrity Apprentice for another season, Trump’s run for president had already led to some changes for the show. As Politico noted, the network was planning to do another season as slated despite Donald’s election exploratory committee coming together. However, the new season would have been done without Trump. Now, however, it looks like plans have changed again.
As of the news officially breaking, Trump hasn’t responded to the news from NBC via Twitter, his typical platform for sharing his opinions. It would seem he may have been in the midst of a speech at the City Club in Chicago as the network made the announcement, and most would imagine he’ll have plenty to say once he’s back online.
Many would guess that Trump will either threaten a lawsuit against NBC or act as if he doesn’t care and doesn’t want the partnership anyway. Will NBC change course once Trump is out of the headlines again, or is this business relationship done for good? Did the network make the right call in firing Donald Trump? Does the Celebrity Apprentice leader really have a shot at making an impact on the 2016 presidential election?
Updated: Donald Trump has responded to NBC’s statement that they’re cutting ties with him and he’s not holding back. The Celebrity Apprentice star calls the network weak and foolish, notes Deadline. In addition, it seems he is indeed threatening a lawsuit over the decision and as GossipCop shares, it seems that The Donald is indeed trying to turn things around and insinuate that he was the one who ended the partnership.
[Photo by Christopher Gregory/Getty Images]
