Breitbart News has obtained the full video of Donald Trump performing an Apprentice-style career evaluation of President Barack Obama during the 2012 election.
Trump made the video, which his political operatives (who provided the video to Breitbart News) say cost $100,000 to produce, for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. It was supposed to air at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa last August. Unexpected bad weather threw the convention off schedule, and the Romney campaign never ended up publishing it, though a clip leaked to NBC News’ Today Show in September.
Trump allies say Romney’s top political adviser Stuart Stevens and his partner at political consulting group SSG-DC Russ Schriefer made the decision to axe the video.
In the video, an actor who portrayed Obama visits Trump’s office in New York.
“It looks like you’ve never really managed people before,” Trump says. “You’ve never run a business. Who hired you?”
The video went through several other memorable moments of Obama’s first term before Trump wrapped up the review with his signature line: “President Obama, you’re fired.”
While the video has some comedic value now, Trump believes it highlights how some political operatives waste resources while being out of touch with voters.
During his Faith and Freedom Coalition speech last month in Washington, Trump said he felt “slighted” by the Romney campaign.
While this video would not have completely fixed what he considers Romney’s out-of-touch nature, Trump believes it is an example of what went wrong. “They never put it on,” Trump said of the video. “The reason they didn’t put it on is because they thought it was too controversial. Controversy. It might not be politically correct.”
“I think it would have brought down the house,” Trump added.
Stevens tells it differently, saying he thinks what happened is “pretty straightforward.”
“It was made for the Convention and was scheduled for Monday night,” Stevens told Breitbart News. “Of course, as it turned out, there was not a Monday night program, which created huge, huge scheduling problems, as you will well remember. We had to cancel numerous speakers and drop multiple program elements.”
Stevens added that the campaign may have shown it at fundraisers.
“It was not a length that could be aired in a time slot on television IE wasn’t a 30 or a 60 second,” Stevens said. “We made scores of different videos that had different uses. It was very good of Mr. Trump to help out but he was always great to work with in the campaign.”
Trump’s team notes that Stevens and Schriefer gave New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the keynote slot; Christie did not mention Romney until the 16-minute mark of his address. SSG-DC worked for Christie back in 2009 in his successful bid for the New Jersey governorship, and they are now working for him again.
Sam Nunberg, a political operative who works with Trump, said he believes Stevens and Schrieffer “used Romney’s primary win to promote Christie. Plain and simple. And in doing so, they broke promises that were made to many during the primary, including Mr. Trump.”
“They were disloyal, just like their prize client Christie,” he claimed.
Stevens disagrees with Trump’s team’s assessment of their work with Christie.