Why an Apprentice Exec Broke His Silence About Donald Trump: “He Would Like to Be a Dictator”

Several minutes into Donald Trump’s dark Madison Square Garden rally speech on Sunday, the former president fired up his MAGA loyalists with the signature phrase from his NBC reality series The Apprentice. “Next Tuesday, you have to stand up and you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve done a terrible job,” Trump declared. “Kamala, you’re fired!” The crowd’s thunderous response was yet another reminder that The Apprentice remains central to Trump’s political appeal.

For former NBC chief marketing officer John Miller, this is a source of deep shame. His department created the advertorial myth of Trump’s business prowess and promoted it to millions of Americans. The truth was that Trump went through multiple bankruptcies despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars of his father’s money. Miller believes that without The Apprentice, Trump would never have been in a position to run for president. “He didn’t have a real company. It was basically a loose collection of LLCs. They’d been bankrupt four times and twice more when we were filming the show. The Apprentice helped him survive that,” Miller told me. “People thought he would be a good president because I made him seem like a legitimate businessman.”

The specter of a second Trump administration motivated Miller to speak out. He wrote an op-ed for US News and World Report published on October 16, titled “We Created a Monster,” that apologized for his role in turning Trump into a reality TV star. With a week to go before the election, I spoke to Miller about the 14 years he spent working with Trump on The Apprentice, why he thinks Trump is a lying racist, and what he sees as the danger of a second Trump term. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Vanity Fair: Let’s start out talking about how you marketed The Apprentice.

John Miller: Initially, we leaned into the idea that it was a show from Mark Burnett, the creator of Survivor. But when we saw some early takes, we realized Trump was going to be a big character. So we created the title sequence with the theme music of the show, which was For the Love of Money by the O’Jays. We shot the promos with Trump in his limousine, in his helicopter, in his jet, and at Trump Tower. We created the sense of an American royalty. We kept pounding that message over and over again. I called it “ruthless consistency.”

So you sold a phony image of him as a successful businessman?

Yeah. Trump made Mark Burnett rent two floors in the Trump Tower. One of the floors was used to create a false entryway into Trump Tower. So when you came out of the elevator, there was this big fancy place and a receptionist that didn’t exist. And then another part of that floor was the boardroom that was entirely created to make it look like it was a big, important boardroom. Because Trump’s real boardroom was shabby. You would never think of it as a big-time businessman’s boardroom.

Why did you decide to speak out now?

When I retired in 2022, I started writing a book called How I Ruined American Culture. And at a certain point, it was clear I wasn’t going to get the book done before the election. So it wasn’t until two weeks ago that I said, I have to get part of the story out, and if it kills the book, so be it. What if my little story could mean the difference of a tenth of a rating point in three battleground states that could win the election for Harris?

So what did you do?

I started writing a Facebook post. Then the next day, it became a LinkedIn article. I pitched it as an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal but I never heard back. Then US News and World Report reached out and said, “Would you like to do an op-ed?”

Let’s get into what you wrote. Tell me about your experience working with Trump.

He could be charming, particularly the first time you meet him. He was very easy to manipulate because if you wanted him to do something, all you have to do is just compliment him in ways that would make most people blush.

The show aired on Thursday nights and he would often call me on Friday and say, “John, how did we do?” I would just say, “We did very well.” And he would say, “We were the number one show on television!” I’d say, “No, we weren’t but we did very well.” That happened a number of weeks and I kept thinking, Does he just not read the ratings? And I just realized, that’s what he did: He said something he wanted people to

believe over and over again, and eventually, it will be true.

What was the response to your op-ed?

I got an enormous amount of replies from people who I had worked with over many years. They said they were proud and what I had done was very courageous.

Do you worry about Trump coming after you?

I’m retired; there’s not much he can do for me from a business standpoint. I suppose he can send a bunch of people with guns to the house, if he can find where I live.

Tell me about his racist idea to do a season of The Apprentice where Black contestants would compete against white contestants.

We had a wrap party after the third season at Lincoln Center. I was at the bar waiting to get a drink for my wife, and Trump came up to me and said, “John, I’ve got a great idea for season four: Blacks versus whites.” So, in an instant, I’m thinking I can’t say what I really think, which is: What the fuck. Are you crazy? Because he doesn’t react well when people say his ideas are bad. So I said, “I can understand why you think that’s a great idea because that would be a very noisy idea. Headlines would be everywhere. Everybody would be talking about that, but you make most of your money off of the [product] integrations in the show. And there’s no company that’s going to take part in that, so this is going to hit your pocketbook pretty hard.”

And what did he say?

He said, “The ratings would be huge!” He really didn’t understand why it would be a problem. Then after a little conversation, he asked my wife, “What do you think?” And she said, “I just think it would be wrong. It’s a terrible idea.” He huffed at my wife and walked away. The fact that he didn’t understand why having Black people compete against white people would be problematic spoke to racist tendencies.

In May, Slate published an essay by former Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt that alleged a tape exists of Trump saying the N-word on camera. Do you think Trump said the N-word?

He did, and quite honestly, he probably said it more than once.

How do you know?

I heard from one of the executives who used to work on the show.

What are some other memories of working with Trump?

In 2009, because I was friends with an executive producer of the Miss USA pageant, I was asked to be a judge. The pageant was owned by NBCUniversal and Trump. One thing that was written into [Trump’s] deal, which I did find out, was that he had the ability to go into the women’s changing rooms whenever he chose to, and he had total freedom to walk around. Now, somebody else might think it would be inappropriate to come in when the women are changing from their bathing suits into their gowns. Not Trump. That is exactly when he would go in. And he was pretty open about that. Because he acted like, This is my pageant, and that’s what I do.

What did you think in 2015 when he came down the golden escalator and started running for president?

I thought, Has there ever been somebody who is less qualified to be president than Trump? And has there ever been anybody that’s more telegenic and understands how to manipulate the media more than Trump?

What are your politics?

My parents were Republican. I was Republican probably somewhere into the Nixon administration. Then at that point, I would say I might’ve still been a registered Republican, but I acted more like an independent. I voted for [Ronald] Reagan. I went back and forth.

Who did you vote for in 2016?

In ’16, I voted for Hillary. In ’20, I voted for Biden, and I’ve already voted for Harris.

I guess what I’m saying is, why did you wait to speak out now? There were so many times you could have been like, You know what, that’s enough.

Yeah. There’s a couple of reasons for it. First of all, in 2016, I was in a senior executive position and reporting to the CEO of NBCUniversal Steve Burke. And it was Steve’s policy that we [not take partisan stands]. It was just really not done, particularly when you own a news organization.

What do you think the stakes of this election are?

I go back and forth. He bloviates about so many things, so how much of this is bullshit or not? And will he really act like a dictator on day one and then remain that way? I do think that he would like to take CBS off the air and NBC off the air and ABC off the air. Anybody other than Fox News who says anything bad about him he wants off the air.

So you think he wants to be a dictator?

I do think he would like to be a dictator. The people that he brought in for the first term that probably allowed him to be marginally successful during those first three years until the pandemic. That’s not going to be in place this time because he’ll hire yes-men and he’ll hire loyal people. And so the government, at best, will function badly, and at worst, he will do his best to make it authoritarian. And the worst thing is that we really could have the America that you and I both know go away.

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