Former 'Apprentice' Executive Says He Regrets Mythologizing Trump

Former NBC marketing executive John Miller said, "People thought he would be a good president because I made him seem like a legitimate businessman.”

A former executive on Donald Trump’s reality show, “The Apprentice,” says he feels ashamed for his role in mythologizing a man he now says “would like to be a dictator.”

Earlier this month, former NBC marketing executive John Miller wrote an opinion piece for U.S. News & World Report in which he apologized to the country for helping to “create a monster.”

Now he’s told Vanity Fair just how effective the show was in making Trump seem like a viable presidential candidate despite evidence to the contrary being in plain sight.

“He didn’t have a real company” at the time the show premiered in 2004, Miller said. “It was basically a loose collection of LLCs. They’d been bankrupt four times and twice more when we were filming the show. ′The Apprentice’ helped him survive that. People thought he would be a good president because I made him seem like a legitimate businessman.”

Miller said that part of the deal to get Trump to participate was to rent two floors at Trump Tower in Manhattan.