‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ will still count Donald Trump as executive producer

For the past couple of months, one of the appeals for people who oppose Donald Trump politically to be watching “The Celebrity Apprentice” early next year was that he was no longer affiliated with the show or with NBC in any way.

Well, about that…

According to a new report coming in right now via Variety, Trump is going to continue to hold onto his executive-producer credit for the upcoming season, and will be featured by name at the end of the episodes alongside show host Arnold Schwarzenegger and also franchise powerhouse Mark Burnett. While he is not involved with any aspect of production, he will receive a small per-episode fee of some form every time the show airs.

There are a number of complicated ways to look at this. Maybe you can spin a positive out of this and say that this will give Trump less of an incentive to publicly bash a show that no longer features his name; if he is still getting paid for it, he will want for it to do well, especially since this is a franchise that exists in some shape or from in multiple parts of the world.

On the flip side, this involvement in the series can be thought of as a major conflict of interest for a man who is entering the Presidency with many of these such conflicts against his name. Have you ever heard of a hitting President adding to their IMDb page in any way other than themselves appearing on various talk shows? The biggest thing that this announcement does that is somewhat dangerous is that it complicates matters of people out there debating of they wanted to watch the show in the first place; hearing of Trump’s involvement may be enough to scare some people off who don’t want to be viewed as supporting him in any way.

We’ll still be covering the show regardless of the credit, but we do understand how hearing this news could lead to some mixed emotions. (Photo: NBC.)