Though it may have been fun ten years ago to watch Donald Trump purse his lips, make a diminutive hand gesture, and nasally intone, “You’re fired,” the figurehead of the wealth gap has become a slightly harder character to toss aside with a hearty guffaw or eye-roll: his status as a presidential candidate means the inanity it’s so easy to laugh at could potentially govern us.
His dealings with NBC — as a producer for a number of shows and host for Celebrity Apprentice — helped spin the wheels of his particularly dangerous machine of entrepreneur-turned-celebrity-turned-politician. Today, Trump fell victim to the very words that’ve become his catchphrase… from the network that made those words his catchphrase. (Yes, I’m talking about “You’re fired.”)
It became apparent that NBC would have to either detach from Trump or come across really poorly after the actual announcement of Trump’s candidacy, during which he delivered a hefty dosage of racism in his stance against immigration. His comment:
The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico send its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
This spurred a Change.org petition calling for NBC to drop all Trump-related programming. Meanwhile, Univision cancelled its Trump-produced Miss USA telecast, while NBC at first just dissociated itself politically from Trump, issuing a statement saying that they disagree with him “on a number of issues, including his recent comments on immigration.”
According to Variety, however, the network has just now decided that they’ll cease to contribute to the Trump icon machine. NBC said in a statement:
Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump. At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values. To that end, the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, which are part of a joint venture between NBC and Trump, will no longer air on NBC.
The Celebrity Apprentice will continue to run, but Trump was allegedly retiring anyway to focus on his campaign, and it’ll therefore continue without him as a host. We can only hope the end of his NBC era won’t be the beginning of his presidential one.