Slate has an incredible and somewhat disturbing series of interviews with former employees on Donald Trump’s reality show The Apprentice, which reveals that Trump is “obsessed with menstruation” and is as stingy with charities and his crew as he is with veterans’ organizations. But if you are fascinated by the curious Trump-Christie relationship, in which Trump repeatedly degrades Christie in public, while also (reportedly) forcing him to do things like “fetch McDonald’s” in private, than I would direct your attention to the section, “He Likes to Keep ‘a Fat Guy’ Around.”
“There was a fat contestant who was a buffoon and a fuckup,” recalls the midlevel producer. “And he would fuck up week after week, and the producers would figure that he’d screwed up so badly that Trump would have to fire him. But Trump kept deciding to fire someone else. The producers had to scramble because of course Trump can never be seen to make a bad call on the show, so we had to re-engineer the footage to make a different contestant look bad. Later, I heard a producer talk to him, and Trump said, ‘Everybody loves a fat guy. People will watch if you have a funny fat guy around. Trust me, it’s good for ratings.’ I look at Chris Christie now and I swear that’s what’s happening.”
So there you have it: Trump like Chris Christie because he thinks he’s good for ratings—and because someone has to pick up Trump’s Big Mac.