EXCLUSIVEDonald Trump claimed Joan Rivers voted for him in the 2016 election even though she died in 2014, new book reveals

• e-mail

Former President Donald Trump claimed the late comedienne Joan Rivers voted for him even though she died in 2014, according to a forthcoming book about The Apprentice. 

In Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, Variety's Co-Editor-in-Chief Ramin Setoodeh asked Trump about his relationship with Rivers, the winner of season 8 of the show in 2009. 

'I thought she might have been a Republican,' Trump said. 'I know one thing: she voted for me, according to what she said.' 

It's well documented that Rivers had a good relationship with both Trump and his 2016 rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton - however there was a problem with the ex-president's claim.

Rivers died in 2014 - two years and two months before Election Day.

2016 was the first chance Americans got to cast a vote for Trump at the ballot box. 

The comment is more eye-popping considering Setoodeh's six interviews with Trump for the book all came after the 2020 election, when Trump's team tried to push that dead voters illegally cast votes for President Joe Biden - claims that were refuted.

Donald Trump (left) poses with Joan Rivers (right) during Celebrity Apprentice's live season finale in May 2010. He told the author of a new Apprentice book that Rivers voted for him in the 2016 election - despite the fact she died in September 2014 

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment. 

Trump had segued into Rivers' political inclinations after talking about the late comic's reaction to her daughter Melissa getting fired from that season of the show - Celebrity Apprentice 2. 

Variety's Co-Editor-in-Chief Ramin Setoodeh's Apprentice in Wonderland arrives in bookstores Tuesday 

The ex-president also made clear that he didn't care for The Apprentice being rebranded as Celebrity Apprentice in those later seasons. 

'I don't even call it The Celebrity Apprentice, I just call it The Apprentice. I always called it The Apprentice purposefully, because it was The Apprentice. I thought it was a good name, but I just call it The Apprentice,' he said. 

'I thought it was disrespectful,' Trump added.

Setoodeh interpreted this to mean that the ex-president 'worried the title change would erase the public's memory of his years of success on TV.' 

Still, Trump touted the celebritized version of his reality show. 

'I mean, I got the biggest stars to go on that show. It was so easy,' the presumptive Republican nominee said. 'You know Joan Rivers wouldn't do a show like that normally, right?' 

Setoodeh pointed out that Rivers had 'built her career on a willingness to appear anywhere there were cameras.' 

Donald Trump, Joan Rivers and Melania Trump attend The Celebrity Apprentice season finale at the at American Museum of Natural History on May 10, 2009 in New York City

And Rivers was a natural reality television star, throwing an epic tantrum, Trump recalled, when she caught wind that Melissa had been dismissed by the real estate mogul-turned-reality show host. 

'Joan was so angry,' Trump said. 'She went crazy when I fired the daughter.' 

'Joan loved Melissa more than anything she's ever loved before. She thought Melissa was the end-all, and she went totally crazy in defense of her daughter,' the ex-president continued. 'Oh, they were both yelling. It was great TV. But maybe Joan had more of a right to be yelling.'

But that on-screen fight, Trump indicated, never dimmed Rivers' appreciation of him. 

'Despite the anger about Melissa, she was a big fan!' he boasted. 'She said, "Nobody else that I've met could have done what you did." She meant it too.' 

There is some evidence that Rivers may have cast a ballot for Trump.

On an episode of Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live Rivers gushed about Trump and told the Bravo head that Trump 'would have made a great president' on the heels of him teasing a 2012 bid. 

Trump ultimately sat that election out - but was motivated, in part, to run four years later by President Barack Obama ridiculing the D-listers involved in Celebrity Apprentice at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. 

'We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,' Obama said at the time. 'For example - no seriously, just recently in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice ...the men's cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks.'

'And there was a lot of blame to go around,' Obama said. 'But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership.'

'And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meat Loaf. You fired Gary Busey,' the Democratic president said. 'And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night.' 

After Clinton's shock defeat in 2016, Melissa Rivers told an audience in New York in October 2017 that her mother would have voted for the female candidate over Trump. 

Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California

'She knew them both,' Melissa told Whoopi Goldberg while promoting a book about her mom, according to The New York Post.  

'Our families had a very long, outside-of-the-spotlight relationship with the whole Trump family,' Melissa recalled. 'I think in the beginning she would have been like, "Yes, great, great, great super," and then she would have been like, "Oh, s***."' 

Melissa added that her mother 'felt for a long time it was time for a woman president.'

'I think in the end of it all, she would have definitely been a Hillary supporter,' the comedian's daughter said.  

Apprentice in Wonderland arrives in bookstores Tuesday.