Liberal satirical news program The Daily Show has uncovered footage from an episode of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice revealing that Donald Trump once fired a contestant for “locker room talk.”
The Daily Show posted the clip on its Twitter page Monday:
Donald Trump in 2010: “This is my boardroom. It’s not a locker room. Maria, you’re fired.” ¯_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/UlsP9Xjg7F
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 10, 2016
The clip shows Trump blasting professional wrestler Maria Kanellis for using the term “crap” in his boardroom. At the time, she was confronting her fellow contestant, Australian chef Curtis Stone, for his use of the women’s bathroom. “The reason why I said you were so arrogant was because you came in our dressing room and you took a crap and left the stench in the room,” an indignant Kanellis told Stone.
After a short back-and-forth between the two contestants, Trump appeared to sympathize with Stone and decided to condemn Kanellis for hitting a “little below the belt.”
Explicitly labeling her comments as “locker room” talk, Trump ultimately fired Kanellis for bringing inappropriate language into a professional space.
“It is sort of gross, though, bringing that up. It’s like disgusting,” stated Trump before doing that famous “You’re fired!” gesture with his hands. “This is my board room. It’s not a locker room. Maria, you’re fired.”
Trump’s offensive-taking in 2010 is now coming back to haunt him. “The GOP nominee’s no-nonsense attitude toward Kanellis six years ago is a change from the way he’s brushed off the current-day controversy raging over his past remarks,” notes The Hill.
Indeed, the real estate mogul has attempted to downplay the now-notorious and widely-seen video, in which he boasts about sexually assaulting women, by employing the term “locker room” to imply that his crude remarks are routinely echoed by other men in male-only, harmless conversational spaces. An analogue to the “boys will be boys” defense, Trump’s “locker room” excuse however has been disavowed by pro-athletes and Republican lawmakers alike as they distance themselves from the increasingly-alienated GOP nominee.
Now it seems that Trump himself, or at least the 2010 Celebrity Apprentice incarnation of Trump, probably doesn’t buy the excuse either. The billionaire businessman is no stranger to hypocrisy, but this time, the hypocrisy verges on self-parody.