In October, the infamous “grab them by the pussy” tape threatened to bury the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, whose poll numbers were already dropping at the time. On October 6, the day before the tape leaked, Clinton was leading Trump in nationwide polling by an average of 4.7 points. On October 14, a week after the tape leaked, Clinton was leading by 6.7 points.
But that tape wasn’t enough to put him down. Trump bounced back and, as we know all too well now, won the presidency.
What if the Clinton campaign had more ammo to work with, though? Trump appeared in over 180 episodes of The Apprentice. Hours upon hours of unaired footage featuring Trump was produced, and the discovery of just a minute or two of racist rambling might have been able to swing the election.
According to comedian Tom Arnold, such a tape does exist:
“I have the outtakes to ‘The Apprentice’ where he says every bad thing ever, every offensive, racist thing ever. It was him sitting in that chair saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children.”
Arnold explained that former The Apprentice employees who had access to this footage failed to leak it before election day because they were afraid doing so would ruin their careers:
“They were scared to death. They were scared of [Trump’s] people. They’re scared they’ll never work again.”
As The Intercept details further, the television industry offers very little job security. Producers, editors, and writers work on a contract basis and bounce around from project to project. They need to maintain good relationships with production companies to ensure they can get more work once their current contract runs out. And leaking footage is a great way to ruin a professional relationship.
It’s hard to blame The Apprentice employees for being concerned about their careers. They just want to put food on the table and improve their standing like the rest of us. But still, it would have been nice for Trump to have his own Michael Richards at The Laugh Factory moment and become a pariah rather than a president.
Featured image via screenshot from YouTube video
