President Trump Once Considered 'Blacks Against Whites' Season of 'The Apprentice'

Prior to becoming president, Donald Trump once contemplated a racially divided season of The Apprentice that would pit "blacks against whites."

As debate swirls around the existence of an alleged recording of President Donald Trump saying the N-word during filming of The Apprentice, a resurfaced 2005 interview with Howard Stern has revealed Trump tossing the idea of a racially-divided season of his NBC reality show.

"There was a concept thrown out by some person — nine blacks against nine whites," Trump told Stern in the 2005 radio interview obtained by CNN. "And it would be nine blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, strong, beautiful people, right? Do you like it?"

While Stern gave his approval of the idea with a simple "I like it," his co-host Robin Quivers warned that Trump would "have a riot" on his hands if he made the idea reality.

"It would be the highest rated show on television," Trump continued.

After being asked if the series would be made up of "very dark blacks or light-skinned blacks," Trump informed Stern that "[an] assortment" of people would be cast with varying skintones, adding that the white contestants would be made up of "probably nine" blondes.

"Wouldn't that set off a racial war in this country?" Stern asked.

"I don't think — see, actually I don't think it would," Trump explained. "I think that it would be handled very beautifully by me."

The Apprentice, which aired on NBC for 14 seasons from 2004-2017, earned Trump a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007. However, since his run for presidency, the commemorative plaque has repeatedly been vandalized, with the most recent scandal having seen a man reducing the star to rubble with a pickaxe that had been hidden in a guitar case.

The series, along with the President, have been surrounded in controversy in recent weeks after former contestant-turned-Trump-staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed in her book Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House that the new President had repeatedly used racial slurs, including the N word, on the set of The Apprentice. It has also been alleged that there are audio recordings of Trump using the racial slur, though they have yet to surface.

Both Trump and Apprentice executive producer Mark Burnett have denied the allegations, with Burnett taking to Twitter to state that the alleged tapes do not exist. For his part, President Trump has claimed that Omarosa has "zero credibility."