With Rosie O’Donnell recently announcing her departure from ABC’s “The View” you had to know that her rival Donald Trump would not remain silent for long. (I think it took him about 2.16 seconds to issue a statement after the news of her leaving was broadcast.) I’ll get to their ongoing battle in a bit, but first I wanted to clear up rumors about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent appearance on Trump’s TV show “The Apprentice: Los Angeles.”
For some reason I allow myself to get sucked into “The Apprentice,” season after season (this year was no different). On the March 18th episode, an unlikely guest appeared on the show—-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The actor turned politician hosted that week’s wining team in a private conference room at the state Capitol. Frankly, I thought it was a tad strange that Schwarzenegger would take time out of what must be a hectic schedule to appear on the show (after all, his TV journalist wife Maria Shriver severed ties with NBC years ago). I couldn’t figure out what the tie-in could be.
Now, I know. According to the president of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a group that tracks campaign donations, billionaire Trump gave $10,000 to Schwarzenegger to help pay off his campaign debts, a little more than a month after the governor guest-starred on “The Apprentice.”
But, hold on. Just so you know—-Schwarzenegger denies any link between the donation and the television appearance. But, the governor’s critics aren’t buying it. They say Schwarzenegger is clearly “using his personal friendships and his celebrity to pay off his campaign debt, and that’s just wrong.”
On one hand you have a spokesperson for Schwarzenegger telling news reporters the April 20th donation was not connected to the governor’s appearance on the NBC prime-time show and that the taping took place earlier in the year. And, on the other, you have a political watchdog group pulling out documentation to prove that the donation was Trump’s first to Schwarzenegger, whom he described as “great friend.”
Who do you believe?
Okay, getting back to the Trump/O’Donnell feud. I thought, by far, the funniest quip made regarding the war between the two egomaniacs came from NBC late-night kings Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien.
This week O’Brien appeared on Leno’s show to talk about succeeding him in 2009.
“It’s years away,” O’Brien maintained on the air, adding that rather than take over for Leno in two years as planned, he’s decided to take the job Rosie O’Donnell is leaving on daytime television’s “The View.”
“I got the call this morning from Barbara Walters,” O’Brien said, adding he planned to pick up where O’Donnell leaves off and begin picking on Donald Trump.
Leno fired back, joking that the redheaded O’Brien has “got the hair” for the part, although “it’s going the wrong way” to match Trump’s much picked on comb-over.
“Exactly,” said O’Brien.