‘All-Star Celebrity Apprentice’: What was Donald Trump saying about Penn Jillette?

On Sunday night, “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice” came to what was a very polarizing ending as Penn Jillette lost to Trace Adkins, and thus a firestorm of criticism began. Did Donald Trump really not pick Penn based on some comments he made to Salon last year, or was it politically motivated in any way? We don’t really want to put on our conspiracy cap here, mostly because at the end of the day, this is a cheesy reality competition. You have a winner to a silly show, and the only thing that really matters is the money that is given to charity.

But is Penn really altogether upset about the loss? It doesn’t quite seem like it. Instead, he used his Twitter today as a means to plug his book “Every Day is an Atheist Holiday,” where he has a little less cynical viewpoint than he did in the Salon piece. (We’re sure it was this article that the Donald was talking about more so than the book.)

The interesting thing here is that if we were judging this season based on actual performance, there is little questioning on our end that Penn played quite possibly the second-or-third-best game in the history of the show, behind John Rich and maybe Piers Morgan. The issue of course here is that Trump, almost understandably so, is going to have a bias in this sense. If you are in control of who wins a season, are you going to give it to a guy who publicly referred to you as a “whackjob” and mocked your political beliefs? We love Penn, but we do recognize the dilemma.

In the end, we’ve probably already blabbed on about this far longer than we need to, especially considering how much / little Trace and Penn actually care about the result.

What do you think about the results, and do you think that Trump really made his decision based on comments that Penn made many months ago? If you want to also read our initial take from the finale, all you have to do is click here.

Photo: NBC