I’m inclined to believe that Trump makes his firing decisions based largely on what would make for exciting TV, rather than strictly based on good business sense.
Last year, people wondered why he kept Omarosa around for so long. Many viewers even wondered if Omarosa was a plant. Well, she wasn’t, and I’m inclined to think that he kept her around to stir up the pot.
Ditto for Bradford’s firing. Now, he gave a pretty good reason for letting him go, and several SDMBers support him in this regard. However, I think it’s much more important to get rid of the truly disruptive or problematic players, rather than someone who made a needlessly cocky decision. It was a foolish thing, I’ll grant, but it was at least motivated by his desire to display confidence and assert the quality of his performance.
In this thread, strangecurrencies expressed his belief that these decisions were tailor-made for television. I concur. I think that Trump has been making decisions which are at least defensible, but which are also designed to create controversy and keep viewers tuned.
The problem with this theory is that last year’s final showdown was between Bill and Kwame, two terminally boring individuals who made it there primarily by flying under the radar at every opportunity. The season’s most irritating ass, Sam, was canned very early (if he’d lasted, you would have hated him so much he would have made Omarosa look like Grace Kelly.) If the firings are made-for-TV then why the final showdown between Mr. Boring and Mr. Dull?
Similarly, why The Bradford and not Ivana? In addition to being phenomenally weak as a competitor, Ivana is boring. Firing The Bradford was fun this week but significantly reduces excitement in future episodes, because he’s interesting, gregarious, irritating and the only man in Team Apex. If the firings were made for TV, he’s the LAST person you’d fire. You’d fire Ivana.
Basically, I think Trump isn’t a real genius when it comes to personnel. He fired The Bradford based on a whim.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the show was tweaked a little for dramatic purposes. However, I think that Trump’s decisions are always at least defensible, and while it’s not impossible that some players make be strung along a little for entertainment purposes, I do think that his decisions at as to the final few and the ultimate winner are based on legitimate feelings about who he is willing to entrust with his money and parts of his business.
IOW, while I think the order of the firings may possibly be manipulated for entertainment purposes, I don’t think that he fires anyone who doesn’t deserve it or that he hasn’t already decided has no chance to win the job anyway (and I’d keep that suitcase packed if I was Ivana or Stacie).
Last year, while I may have had some minor quibbles about the order, I didn’t think that any of Trump’s decisions were patently unfair or irrational- and I try to keep in mind that he probably knows more about what he;s doing and who he wants working for him than I do.
That’s easily explained. Like I said, I think all his firings are at least defensible (and I see that DtC agrees with that assessment).
This doesn’t mean that all of the firings are selected for dramatic purposes. I’m sure that he’s genuinely concerned about finding the best candidate. However, the sequence of these firings (and more importantly, the justifications for these firings!) are probably selected in part based on dramatic impact.
In fact, the show credits have a disclaimer which says that (a) the producers can provide input into these firing decisions, even though (b) the final decision is always Trump’s. This tells me that the producers probably do provide their two cents for dramatic impact, and I suspect that Trump plays along.
As I said in the other thread, I think he keeps some losers around long after he knows they’re out of the running. Possibly for entertainment reasons - Trump’s certainly savvy enough to do that - but also because they act as an extra challenge for the people he’s still considering.
Nowhere does it claim that he’s firing them in order from worst to best. I suspect he narrows the list down pretty quickly, which gives him a lot of leeway as to who to fire when.
IIRC, Omarosa was so long-lived last season largely because she was on the winning team so often, not due to any merit of her own, I might add. I was surprised she was fired as early as she was. I thought for sure he’d keep her around for entertainment value a bit longer, but he didn’t.
As for firing Bradford, I think it offended his sensibilities as reckless and genuinely stupid. I don’t think I would have done it; I’d have given Ivana the axe. But I understand why Trump did it. I felt sure it was a decent decision when Bradford, in the taxi, referred to himself as “the general going into to battle with his troops.” :wally What a patronizing dork.
He was the previous week and I figured that’s how he had intended it, as the results of that event correlated directly with the actions in the boardroom.
He wasn’t the PM, Ivana was, remember? TVeblen said it perfectly on the other thread about this ep: " Bradford hotdogging his macho way into the girls’ team, tacit leader all the way of course; their passively letting him set the tone, even when he gloats about them outselling the opposition by flashing their ‘boobies’." His attitude was, ‘I’m the head honcho on the Apex team, I’m their fearless leader, so I should go into the boardroom with them. They’ll think I’m a big hero, a self-sacrificing manly man,’ when his real motivation was self-aggrandizement. Even though he wasn’t the most deserving of firing on this specific task, it was fun to see him get tripped in mid-swagger.
I also don’t think he was “the best person in the room,” as Trump did. He wasn’t so great on Task 1, and if he’d had his way, they’d have made that stupid football game and lost to the Crustacean Nation. He was saved by the game maker vetoing the idea and choosing something those ‘giggling sorority girls’ actually came up with, not him.
I dunno, maybe guys like him just push my buttons. (ya think?)
I might believe this if he hadn’t been so patronizing and arrogant to the women throughout. I think he really saw himself as being some sort of default leader (by virtue of being a male) which the women should all be naturally subordinate to. If he had ever shown the women any respect or indication that he regarded them as peers rather than serfs and sexual objects I might believe he was only referring to his first week as PM.
No, I think his stunt with giving up immunity was completely calculated and self-serving. If he had actally thought it was a risk he wouldn’t have done it. He thought it was a safe way to score “hero” points. I think he was under the impression that the women would talk about how great he was and that he would look good both th Trump and his team. He was completely caught off guard when Trump had exactly the opposite reaction from what he expected. If nothing else, Bradford’s decision showed a complete inability to read a room- in particular, it showed an inability to read a person who was in a position of power over him- and that in itself is a liability in the business world.
I didn’t even see the episode, but I feel as if I did, because it’s all anyone at my workplace was talking about. And practically everybody at my office was on Bradford’s side.
Now, again, I didn’t see the episode, so I have no idea what Bradford was like or how well/badly his competitors did. But from all I’ve heard, it sounds as if Bradford deserved what he got, even if he was a great competitor and a wonderful guy.
Suppose Bradford really DID work for Trump in a responsible position. Imagine these scenarios:
Bradford had secured a contract in which an architecture firm agreed to produce a design for a dirt-cheap price. Later, the architects asked to renogotiate. Bradford says “Well, I have a contract that gives me the upper hand, and I COULD just take advantage of that… but instead, I’ll waive the contract, and renegotiate.”
Bradford had obtained a key building permit from a city agency. The city gets some flak from environmental groups, and wants to revoke the permit until new conditions can be added. Bradford COULD say "I have the permit, and we’re going ahead. If you have second thoughts now, that’s not my problem. But Bradford says, “Even though I have the upper hand, I’ll waive this permit, and we’ll renegotiate.”
Get the idea? In real business, you NEVER give away an advantage on a whim! If you have the upper hand, you NEVER give it away for nothing! If Bradford did such a thing while in Trump’s employ, he’d cost Trump a fortune.
So, I fully agree with Trump’s decision. Immunity was a powerful asset. Anyone who gives away powerful assets for no reason is crazy!
That said, I don’t take the show seriously as anything but show biz. Frankly, I’d be ASTONISHED if last season’s champion is really in charge of squat on that big Chicago project he was assigned to! And I’ll be more surprised if this season’s champion gets a real job that amounts to much.
I didn’t mean to imply in the post that JThunder referenced that I thought “fairness”, or the lack of it, were especially strong considerations in either Trump’s decision or the audience’s reaction to it.
I just believe that the prime consideration at this point is good television, and that its too early in the game to really zero in on the hiring of a candidate ; for one thing, I think Astorian is dead on when he says:
Right now, The Donald is working a project, and the project is this television show. Ratings are the reward, and a whole handful of marbles are yet to be drawn from the bag and discarded before the business of who gets the job trumps which decisions bring viewers back.
That’s why I believe Bradford’s buttheadery killed him here. Given only what we’ve seen, against Ivana and Stacie in a real crunch situation, I doubt the outcome would have been the same. By the way, I’m not defending the Bradster, I think he came off as a classless pompous ass; how much of this is his true personality and how much is trying to give Trump what he wants is up for debate.
I disagree with your premise. Donald is likely interested in who might break through and demonstrate how to handle the disruptive and problematic players, because businesses will always have disruptive and problematic employees. Part of Kwame’s undoing last year, in my opinion, was his inability to handle Omarosa. Remember how she went off on her own, neglecting her assignments? And Kwame failed to supervise her?
But Bradford’s flaw was, as Donald put it, fatal. Even if he could get along with everybody under him, even if all the employees praised him for a great job, even if he was a hard worker and sales hustler — he still demonstrated a tendency for frivolous and impulsively misplaced martyrdom. I thought the contrast between what he did and what the other team did (asking for the profits to go to charity) made for a nice contrast. What he did was sacrifice his own neck for no gain; what they did was sacrifice a small amount of money in exchange for good PR.
