Bill Pruitt, a former producer for The Apprentice whose NDA just expired after 20 years, writes in Slate that Donald Trump used the n-word during the production of the show — and there are tapes of him doing it.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    In a sane world, a draft dodger saying he ‘liked soldiers who didn’t get captured’ would have been enough.

    The people who vote for him know what he is, they just don’t care.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      I think in a sane world, after the “grab 'em by the pussy” tape came out we’d have never heard from him again.

    • WashedOver@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      It’s been said the pain of the bamboozle is too much for most to acknowledge so they continue to double down on it. The great grifters and conmen know this and use it to their advantage.

      Many think it’s only the stupid and uneducated that are taken in by these scams. At times it’s the tribal nature that we can get caught up in.

      Often the educated are worse off as they know better and the grave injury to their egos won’t allow them to announce to others they have fallen victim as it’s pretty embarrassing. They take their lumps and move on with their lives if they do recognize they have fallen into these traps.

      It’s going to be many years before we get to the other side and then I wonder if it will be like what the Spanish referred to as the Miracle that occurred when Franco died.

      After decades in power, the citizens that fought for Franco and supported him ceased to exist. When asked everyone fought against Franco in the civil war and they secretly fought against him at every level of society, government, and the military. It was miracle how he came to power and won a war with no support from anyone at any level within Spain.

      If we ever get past the identity association of team Orange it will be interesting who is found to still be supporting this current day madness especially among the religious groups that support a man that displays so many of the things many of the regular members would be chastised for…

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        In the 1960 election Kennedy beat Richard Nixon with something like 52% of the vote.

        In 1980, they polled a bunch of people who had voted in that election and somehow 99% of them had voted for Kennedy.

        • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Politics has become teams winning and losing, and a lot of people don’t like to “admit to supporting the losers”

      • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It’s been said the pain of the bamboozle is too much for most to acknowledge so they continue to double down on it. The great grifters and conmen know this and use it to their advantage.

        People in the UFO scene do the same with their grifters.

        • WashedOver@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          I recall reading the Sagan’s Demon Haunted World and the section dedicated to this “phenomenon”. The self convincing and conviction to these events was pretty amazing to read about from a curiosity prospective. The letters he would receive were pretty far out there.

          My matter of fact father swears late one night while grading logging roads in a remote area in the 70s, he saw a big bright light in the sky that he couldn’t explain and it moved in ways he didn’t expect.

          Being out in the wilderness I’m sure it wasn’t a comfortable situation for him. I still wonder what he saw but thankfully there was no accompanying abduction story to go with it in his case. These types of stories and shows did get his a attention forever after as a result.

          • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I personally think there must be some truth to the phenomenon as a whole. But I can’t stand the grifters who sidle up seeking attention or money after a time.

          • Asafum@feddit.nl
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            6 months ago

            While I’m not sure about the lights alone, I’ve read that more often than not those that claim to have been abducted recently had surgery where they were “put under.” The idea is that they’re “remembering” the lights and shapes of the doctors being over them while they dream, but because they already had the surgery some time ago they believe this is a new event that just happened to them.

      • Today@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        This! We don’t need to call people out or harass them for being stupid. We just need for them to drift away from the cult. The constant publicity and chatter just feeds it.

    • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The thing that makes this somewhat relevant is how close the election is. If those tapes exist, and you can get them to the right social media accounts, it might make 0.5 percent of his voters reconsider (and that might be sufficient).

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      6 months ago

      A Trump voter quote that always live rent free in my head is “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting”.

      It tells you everything they need to know about them. They have a shit life, and they want to make damn sure everyone else has a shit life too.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Before Trump I could pretend I lived in a world where the great majority of people were reasonably intelligent and kind.

          • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            There’s an internet joke that the Mayans were right about the world ending in 2012; we just didn’t realize that the collapse would be gradual.

        • lovely_reader@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It’s still true. It’s not that the majority of these people are actually thinking, “How can I make the world worse and make the greatest number of people’s lives bad?” Rather, they’re under the impression that others (probably you) are saying that, and worse, that Trump is somehow their best defense against it.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        It’s a bully mentality. I don’t want to make things better for anyone, I want to make things worse for them. Literal playground bully.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Only because they have a misguided sense of revenge and want to blame the libs for their truncated life expectations when in fact they’ve been supporting and voting for the very politicians most likely to keep pushing their heads under water.

      They want to hurt their opponents. They don’t care what the price is.

    • Billiam@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Donald Trump taught the worst of us that it not only is okay to be a bigoted racist, but that it is okay to be that in public.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      A lot of them care, they just like that he does it. It legitimizes their own shittiness.

  • Iwasondigg@lemmy.one
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    6 months ago

    If this tape got leaked, it would literally help his candidacy. The hatred, cruelty, misogyny - it’s a feature, not a bug. There was already a tape of this guy bragging about sexually assaulting women, and it didn’t make a lick of difference. I can see his rabid followers salivating at the idea of hearing him say the N word on tape.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      It might hamper his apparent surging popularity among black voters

      A lot of people only care about things when they’re impacted

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Wouldn’t that be straight hate speech?

        Is that not a crime, or am I misinformed?

        • Glytch@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          He’s not getting punished for incitement for his speech on Jan 6, why would he get punished for this?

          But, yes, if it led to violence it would be considered inciting violence which is technically a crime.

        • cmac@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Hate speech in the United States

          In a Supreme Court case on the issue, Matal v. Tam (2017), the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no “hate speech” exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment and that the U.S. government may not discriminate against speech on the basis of the speaker’s viewpoint.

          It’s not a crime on its own in the US, but if it incites imminent lawless action that can be a crime.

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Depends on what you mean. Is it hate speech from a court of public opinion standpoint? Probably. Is it from a legal one? The US doesn’t have a hate speech law on the books just “Obscenity law” which allows things to be censored.

          Canadian law has hate speech but it might not fit that either as to legally be chargable as hate speech it needs to fit the criteria. In this instance it could be argued use of an N slur is Denying, minimizing or celebrating past persecution or tragedies that happened to group members… but it would ALSO need be performative in a public space, intended and performed for a large group. If it’s basically in the scope of him having a private conversation with individuals it isn’t a chargeable offence to public order. If he was shouting it in the street sure but consequences wise it’s analogous to someone shouting “The Duck army is coming!” over and over again outside your house 3am. It’s a public nuisance ordinance. If you call the cops will come over and stop it only if someone complains and at worst they will escort you away and issue a fine but nobody is going to do hard time for heralding the Duck army’s arrival or hate speech.

          So like is it hate speech? Maybe. Is he a racist dick who deserves condemnation for being a hateful racist dick? Yes.

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The N word on its own is simply vulgarity. I think hate speech relies on the content of the message.

          For instance.

          What’s up my n****? - Not hate speech.

          Spoiler contains an example of hate speech. It does not represent an actual view that I hold, and it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever written, and should not be read by anyone.

          spoiler

          I chickened out an deleted it. No one needs to read that shit. Just imagine someone expressing a racist sentiment without using the N-word here.

          -Definitetly hate speech without using the N word.

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Good news: There are tapes!

      Bad news: He will face absolutely no consequences from them.

      • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Billionaires stand to gain from Trump getting elected again. Don’t count on those tapes coming to light.

        • normanwall@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Bezos has been targeted by Trump before and could afford to pull off the biggest troll move right before the election

          • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            He could, but ultimately he’s another evil psychopath who will protect his oen kind.

        • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Billionaires stand to gain from Trump getting elected again.

          So the reason he lost in 2020 is…? Those same billionaires all existed then too, you know. Clearly they don’t have as much influence on Presidential elections as you imply.

      • athairmor@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        According to Wikipedia MGM owns the show. Even they might not own the n-word tapes.

        I’d bet that Mark Burnett owns them. And, I don’t think that he’d release them.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I mean… I regularly work under NDAs in tv and they are usually pretty mild but I did one season of… Something that came out inside the past 10 years…and the entire thing was mad brained including the NDA. Production wise these sleazy reality tv things are grifts. If the core reality of them is questioned then it hurts the “integrity” of the brand and ultimately the production company’s bottom dollar. If you don’t buy into the reality aspects those shows lose most of their appeal.

      I can’t even begin to say how weird it was to be crew. There’s like this whole fast-track culture where if you’re a little competent they will invite you onto the next project with basically the same responsibilities but a jacked up important sounding title. From a technical standpoint I’ve seen more discipline and good practice on film student projects. They are their own little worlds inside film and if they don’t work more reality tv they don’t have recognized transferable skills that easily ports to other positions in the industry, so if they want to switch you become a person who has a bunch of entrenched bad habits you have to be trained out of and rehumbled before you can reliably get jobs. The people who get sucked into that world basically live in golden handcuffs.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        If the core reality of them is questioned then it hurts the “integrity” of the brand

        I can’t believe anyone thinks any “reality tv” show is real. The majority of them are all bullshit. Oh, sure, there may be some genuine moments in there, but those are scattered among the scripted and edited garbage.

        • Fungah@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          My ides for a reality.show.is kind of like.a game show. You give people a bunch of cocaine and then send then to work in some sort of quarry breaking rocks. Whoever does the best gets a bunch more cocaine, while the loser just gets a little bit of.cocaine. They’ll work in the quarry for 8 hours a day with their off time spent however they’d like in a group living situation. Probably doing their cocaine. At the end of every week the person with the least amount of cocaine is disqualified. The prize for winning is a shit load of cocaine.

          That’s it. That’s the show. It would be important to select.people that would actually do the cocaine. No teetotalers. Also: open bar.

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          But that’s the thing isn’t it. People cling to the idea that in that trash heap is a sparkle of the genuine even as the recognize the garbageness of the garbage pile. There’s layers to the onion. As long as there’s something that reads convincingly as genuine people will clap themselves on the back for spotting the contrivance while still at some minute level still buying into the perceived core aspect of the show.

          Also let’s not forget that Hugh Laurie receives tons of letters from fans in desperate undiagnosed medical situations on a regular basis. Just because you aren’t fooled doesn’t mean that’s a universal.

  • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    What difference does this make now? Racism isn’t a republican secret, neither is supporting white supremacy. The few bipoc supporters will minimize it.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      You’re 100% spot on. In 2015 Donald Trump was literally being endorsed by KKK Wizards and when pressed to admonish/censure them he refused.

      This is literally not news.

  • masquenox@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    So where are these tapes? We need them because, thanks to the cognitive dissonance enforced on everybody by white liberalism, a blatantly obvious white supremacist will only be seen as a blatantly obvious white supremacist as soon as they hear him use racial slurs.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      Fucking seriously. Put up or shut up. Where’s all the shit that Tom Arnold said he had too?

      Especially now that Trump is actively courting “the black vote” I would think now is a better time than any to release those tapes. I’m sure the parent company owns them and has $ome deal to keep them under wraps though…

  • cardboardchris@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    While this was an interesting read over all, I suspect what I’ll remember most from it is the origin of the expression “a pig in a poke”.

  • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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    6 months ago

    Now he’s been found guilty, I wonder if more and more will dare to come forward. This isn’t that, it is just a NDA running out.

    • negativeyoda@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      To be fair there is something hilarious imagining him using “nigga” in any context… particularly how he’d stretch the corners of his mouth back and over pronounce it

      Also, this is the least surprising “news” I’ve ever heard

      • Wrench@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        And? Seems far more important to release that information on a presidential nominee than it is to not break an NDA

        • Funderpants @lemmy.ca
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          That’s easy for you to say when it’s not your millions of dollars, professional reputation and according to this author, prison time on the line.

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      There are still people that think Trump is a suave businessman that speaks his mind. Never underestimate how uninformed some people are.

      • Ech@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Let’s be honest, no one that still believes that will have this news penetrate their propaganda silos, and what bits do get through will just be ignored or dismissed. They need to believe what they do, and will bend over backwards to justify those beliefs.