Trump Backs Don Jr. for Apprentice Revival, Amazon Downplays
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- Donald Trump, speaking to Fox News' Peter Doocy after an Executive Order signing at the White House, gave a lukewarm endorsement of his 48-year-old son: "He's a good guy… He'd be probably good… He's got a little charisma going. You need a little charisma for that sucker."
- Donald Trump Jr. appeared on the original series as a judge and on-air adviser from 2006-2015, before his father exited in 2015 for his first presidential run; The Apprentice ran 14 seasons from 2004 and earned Trump an Emmy nomination.
- Amazon, which acquired MGM and thus the Apprentice property, pushed back on the Wall Street Journal's revival report, saying it has had only "preliminary internal discussions" since the acquisition and that the show is "not in active development" with any reporting on potential hosts being "purely speculative."
- A source close to events told Deadline the revival buzz likely originated from the Trumps themselves, saying "That show is everything to [the president]" and that creator Mark Burnett "brought him back from obscurity."
- When Trump left the show in 2015, he lobbied for daughter Ivanka Trump — not Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ultimately hosted the 16th and final season — to take the "You're fired!" chair, underscoring the family's longstanding internal jockeying for the hosting role.
Why it matters: The Apprentice was the vehicle that built Trump's public brand, and a family-hosted revival would keep that identity culturally tethered to the presidency, but Amazon's explicit "not in active development" denial signals any return is far from imminent — making this primarily a story about Trump's enthusiasm for a legacy property rather than a concrete programming deal.
