Trump caught on tape using n-word, ex-'Apprentice' producer says

Former President Donald Trump used the n-word in a caught-on-tape discussion on the set of “The Apprentice,” a former producer on the hit reality show said in a newly published tell-all released Thursday.

Ex-“Apprentice” producer Bill Pruitt recalled that Trump mused about whether it would be a big mistake to crown Kwame Jackson, who is Black, as a winner on the first season of the runaway hit show.

“Would America buy a n—– winning?” Trump asked during a session with producers, Pruitt recounted in a piece published in Slate.

Pruitt said other producers recoiled at Trump’s remark but the then-mogul did not back down.

“(Trump) is serious, and he is adamant about not hiring Jackson,” Pruitt related.

Pruitt said he kept quiet about Trump’s use of the racist epithet until now because he signed a non-disclosure agreement that recently expired.

The producer said Trump’s remarks were captured on videotape because producers of the show wanted to document the decision-making behind the game show to counter possible claims that the contest was rigged.

Producer Mark Burnett has dodged questions about whether such a tape exists and MGM, which owns the materials, says it is barred from releasing them by legal agreements. Other producers on the show, including those cited by Pruitt, refused to respond to his requests for comment.

Trump himself has also repeatedly denied using the epithet.

He emphatically pushed back on the claim in 2018 when former contestant Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who is Black, also claimed that he used the racial epithet on the show.

“I don’t have that word in my vocabulary and never have,” Trump tweeted at the time.

Manigault-Newman served as a Trump aide but left his White House amid acrimony and wrote her own tell-all memoir.

Pruitt frames Trump’s racism on “The Apprentice” set as a kind of proving ground for his uncanny ability to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public in two straight elections.

“Donald Trump is selling his vision of the world, and people are buying it,” Pruitt wrote. “Knowing all they know, how could these people still think he’s capable of being president of the United States? Perhaps they watched our show and were conned.”