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Many critics have accused Donald Trump of being a "nepo baby" in the Trump Organization given how much he inherited from his father.
Yet, in a new book, Trump rails against the idea of children getting to where they are based on the success of their parents.
More than halfway into "Apprentice in Wonderland," writer and reporter Ramin Setoodeh recalls the 2009 blowup after Trump fired Melissa Rivers from the show. Stories have surfaced about Trump pretending Rivers' mother, Joan, was somehow a Republican and a supporter of his. Trump even went so far as to say that she voted for him in 2016 from beyond the grave. Joan Rivers died in 2014.
When Melissa was kicked off the show, Trump opted to keep a Playboy model and a professional poker player. Both individuals, her mother Joan felt, were below her daughter.
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“Joan was so angry,” Trump recalls with excitement, the book says. “I mean, I got the biggest stars to go on that show,” he says of the Rivers' face-off against the model and poker players. “It was so easy. You know, Joan Rivers wouldn’t do a show like that normally, right?”
Setoodeh writes that "Rivers famously built her career on a willingness to appear anywhere there were cameras, including as a red-carpet host at awards ceremonies."
Trump remembered: “She went crazy when I fired the daughter.”
Setoodeh said that the drama on the show illustrated how much it had jumped the shark from its high-brow and aspirational intentions.
Trump recalled Melissa Rivers unleashing mayhem in the outer office. “She was so nasty. I hear Melissa yelling outside. She was yelling at everybody!”
At that point, Donald and Ivanka took cover in the boardroom. As he began to talk about Melissa again, he requested the reporter go off the record to "tell me what he really thinks of this volatile behavior."
"In general, Trump looks upon nepo babies—except for his own children—as entitled brats," wrote Setoodeh.
Trump crafts a more diplomatic portrayal of his thoughts when back on the record: “How about this? Joan loved Melissa more than anything she’s ever loved before. She thought Melissa was the end-all, and she went totally crazy in defense of her daughter. Oh, they were both yelling. It was great TV. But maybe Joan had more of a right to be yelling.”
A 2018 report about Trump's finances revealed that Trump was given over $413 million by his father to become a "successful" businessman. Forbes said that if Trump didn't do anything with the money and instead invested it, he would have over $2.5 billion in cash.
Donald Trump falsely claims he was given just $10 million and built it into a billion-dollar empire. CNBC reported that it was closer to over $60 million. He was also recently found guilty of artificially inflating the size of his assets to appear richer to investors or banks.
Trump's eldest three heirs ultimately joined the company, with their father handing over projects they could run despite their lack of experience.
Upon taking the White House, Trump's daughter and son-in-law both worked there, side-stepping anti-nepotism laws that were preventing relatives from being hired. They claimed that it was all above board because they weren't being paid a salary, although the couple disclosed up to $640 million in outside income while they worked at the White House.
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