There have already been plenty of rumors about “the real reason” Donald Trump entered the presidential race in June of 2015. Some say it’s payback for the lambasting Seth Meyers and President Obama gave him during the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That seems far-fetched, but Trump was still angry about it five years later, saying in 2016 that “I didn’t like [Meyers’] routine. His was too nasty, out of order.” Trump has since refused to attend White House Correspondents’ Dinners. Another popular theory was posited by Howard Stern, who said Trump only ran for office to negotiate a higher-paying deal with NBC for The Apprentice.
Now a new theory lines up with Stern’s while adding an amusing wrinkle you will no doubt find surprising. During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of his Toronto film festival debut of Fahrenheit 11/9, documentarian Michael Moore claimed Trump’s decision to announce his candidacy was provoked by his jealousy towards… Gwen Stefani? But she’s just a girl in the world? That’s all that they’ll let her be!
According to Moore (one of the few people who predicted a Trump presidency), Trump learned NBC was paying the former No Doubt frontwoman more for her work as a coach on The Voice than he was earning for The Apprentice, so he staged a presidential bid he didn’t intend to stick with in order to prove his popularity and negotiate a better deal with NBC.
“He’d been talking about running for president since 1988, but he didn’t really want to be president. There’s no penthouse in the White House. And he doesn’t want to live in a black city. He was trying to pit NBC against another network, but it just went off the rails.”
Shortly after Trump announced his candidacy, he made his infamous comments about Mexico sending its “criminals” and “rapists” as immigrants, then he doubled and tripled down on those comments, leading to NBC cutting ties with him. With contract negotiations no longer on the table, that left him without his pay raise but still running for president, and we know how that ended. Everything about this story is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
(Via Vulture and The Hollywood Reporter)