Donald Trump Used N-Word on The Apprentice Set While Weighing Pros and Cons of Black Finalist, Producer Claims

Donald Trump allegedly used a racial epithet behind the scenes to describe one of his first-ever finalists on The Apprentice, according to a producer in the boardroom.

Bill Pruitt, an unscripted television producer who worked on the first two seasons of Trump's NBC reality show, wrote about the former president's off-camera personality in an essay published by Slate on Thursday, May 30.

In the piece, among other anecdotes, Pruitt remembered the conference that stakeholders had with Trump as the first season came to a close, when the contestant pool had been narrowed to two "capable and confident" men each vying to get hired: Kwame Jackson and Bill Rancic.

Carolyn Kepcher, one of the judges, spoke up during the meeting to tell Trump that she saw Jackson overcome more obstacles than Rancic during one of the challenges, according to Pruitt. "I think Kwame would be a great addition to the organization," he quoted her as saying.

Pruitt wrote that Trump was "clearly resisting" Kepcher's advice, as he winced and bobbed his head around while he mulled over her opinion.

Trump allegedly told those in the boardroom that he was disappointed in Jackson for not firing contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman when she caused trouble.

Showrunner Jay Bienstock then chimed in to tell Trump that firing people was his job, not Jackson's, and Kepcher added that Jackson probably didn't know he was allowed to fire anyone, Pruitt claimed.

Trump winced again, Pruitt said, and continued bobbing his head, before allegedly saying, "Yeah, but I mean, would America buy a n----- winning?"

"Kepcher’s pale skin goes bright red," Pruitt wrote, describing the room's reaction. "I turn my gaze toward Trump. He continues to wince. He is serious, and he is adamant about not hiring Jackson."

He continues: "Afterward, we film the final meeting in the boardroom, where Jackson and Rancic are scrutinized by Trump, who, we already know, favors Rancic. Then we wrap production, pack up, and head home. There is no discussion about what Trump said in the boardroom, about how the damning evidence was caught on tape. Nothing happens."

In the end, Rancic was chosen as the first-ever Apprentice winner and Jackson became the runner-up.

When reached by PEOPLE for comment on Thursday, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung brushed Pruitt's allegations off as "fake news" and shifted gears to focus on President Joe Biden.

"This is a completely fabricated and bulls--- story that was already peddled in 2016. Nobody took it seriously then, and they won’t now, because it’s fake news," Cheung said in a statement. "Now that Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats are losing the election and Black voters are rejecting their policies, they are bringing up old fake stories from the past because they are desperate."

In 2018, Manigault Newman — who had recently been fired from Trump's White House — made similar allegations against her former boss, saying she had been told the Apprentice host was repeatedly captured on tape using the N-word in outtakes.

“My certainty about the N-word tape and his frequent uses of that word were the top of a high mountain of truly appalling things I’d experienced with him, during the last two years in particular,” she wrote in her book Unhinged. “Using the N-word was not just the way he talks but, more disturbing, it was how he thought of me and African Americans as a whole.”

She further said, referring to Trump, that “the person I’d thought I’d known so well for so long was actually a racist."

At the time, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed the book as "riddled with lies and false accusations," and criticized the media for giving her a platform.

When Manigault Newman's book was published, then-President Trump took to Twitter in a rage, calling his former White House aide a “dog” with “zero credibility.”