Source: Bill Tompkins / Getty
Actress Holly Robinson Peete shockingly confessed that she was once the subject of Donald Trump’s racism during a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s The Karen Hunter Show.
Peete recalled a moment where Trump referred to her as the n-word during the season nine finale of The Celebrity Apprentice, where the final decision came down to choosing between Peete and singer Bret Michaels as the winner. Peete says that she did not find out about it until after taping had finished.
The rumor surfaced in 2019 after Noel Casler, a comedian who worked on the show, revealed it in a tweet, but this is the first time Peete is speaking on it.
“I found him to be kind of piggish and bullish and stuff, but I didn’t find him to be just this…who he is now, I did not see that,” Peete began about Trump.
“Shortly after the finale, rumors started going around that he had tossed out an ‘N-word’ referring to me. “And I was like, ‘huh?’ When the producer told me when it happened, during the finale, I remember the moment. I wasn’t in earshot, but I could see them deciding between me and Bret Michaels.”
She recalled the moment saying she saw Trump “talking with producers and they’re really animated and that was when I heard that he said, ‘They want the ‘N-word’ to win.’ Because I guess the network wanted me to win or me to be chosen and Trump wanted Bret.”
“And the quote was he ‘wanted the N-word to win’ and I heard it and you know, how could anybody believe that he wouldn’t say something like that? I firmly believe he probably uses that language all the time. And then by the time it sort of started resurfacing, I didn’t even really address it too much because I felt like, what difference is it going to make? People have accepted the things that he said that are so vile about so many other people, what difference is it going to make if he said that about me,” Peete said.
Peete told Hunter that she agreed to appear on The Celebrity Apprentice before Trump went full birther, where he began the racist accusations around former president Barack Obama’s citizenship status. Peete made it clear that had that been happening, she would have never signed to be on the show. Peete also said she told executive producer Mark Burnett that she refused to be portrayed as an Omarosa Manigault Newman fill in for ratings and giggles.
“Y’all don’t want to meet ‘Philadelphia Holly’ because ‘Philadelphia Holly’ is not the Holly everybody knows from TV,” she said while laughing.
Peete’s main goal for taking part in the show was to raise money for autism awareness through the HollyRod Foundation.
Peete also discussed her jubliation over watching her close friend Kamala Harris make history first in the Senate, then again as the first Black woman to be elected vice president of the United States.
“When your friends get to high places, the good news is, is that you know their heart. You really do know their heart. And I think people will discover Kamala to be not just a very, very fierce and capable politician and advocate for people,” said Peete.
