It’s always hardest when you’re the first contestant to be fired from Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice, but it’s even harder when you’re fired and it’s shrouded in controversy that you have nothing to do with.
On Sunday night, Keshia Knight Pulliam was axed from Trump’s show because she failed to ask for help during one of her team’s challenges. Pulliam’s team had a charity task, and everyone expected her, as project manager, to use her Cosby Show connections and ask her former TV father, Bill Cosby, for help to raise money for their charity.
“I have not talked to Bill Cosby on the phone in I don’t know how long,” she explained to Trump in the boardroom. “For me to pick up the phone having not talked to you for five years, except for when we run into each other for a Cosby event, I feel that’s not my place to do.”
Although the series was filmed more than a year ago, and the current controversy surrounding Cosby had not yet reared its ugly head, it made for really awkward television that probably should have been edited out. But, of course, ratings are king.
Trump didn’t accept Pulliam’s excuse as to why she didn’t reach out to Cosby and blamed her for her team’s failure.
“You are an amazing person, but you were the project manager. You didn’t make one call that I really believe that if you’d called that gentleman he would have helped you, even if you hadn’t spoken to him in years,” he said.
“You were an amazing team with one of the most successful shows ever, so I think it would have been a good call to make for charity,” he added. “You have to take responsibility.”
Since the recording of the show, more than 20 women have come forward with accusations of being drugged and assaulted by Cosby. Trump defended using the footage in light of the recent controversy and stated that he wasn’t aware of it at the time of the taping.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/551955535474728960
I guess it doesn’t matter that these allegations were around in previous years; apparently Trump lives under a rock.
Read: Keshia Knight Pulliam Defends Bill Cosby: ‘That’s Just Not the Man I Know’