Donald Trump and Martha Stewart’s War of Words

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Wednesday, February 22, 2006

AP is reporting on the continuing feud between Donald Trump and Martha Stewart over the latter’s failed attempt to carry a spin-off of Trump’s popular “The Apprentice.”

The bleat goes on in the rekindled Donald Trump-Martha Stewart battle. The two pop-culture icons spent much of Tuesday in a back and forth tempest over “The Apprentice.”

First, the domestic diva took aim in an article in the current Newsweek; then The Donald blasted back in a letter to Martha delivered Tuesday; late Tuesday a stunned Stewart returned fire, and then later Tuesday Trump shot again in a TV interview. In his biting letter, Trump wrote that Stewart’s version of “The Apprentice” was “a mistake for everybody â especially NBC.” The real-estate mogul was responding to Stewart’s sniping to Newsweek that “Martha Stewart: The Apprentice” floundered last fall â canceled after one cycle â because Trump would not take his competing show off the schedule.

Her show was supposed to be the only “Apprentice” and was meant to start out with her firing Trump on the air, she told Newsweek, reiterating comments she’d made before. “Having two `Apprentices’ was as unfair to him as it was unfair to me,” she told Newsweek. “But Donald really wanted to stay on.”

Trump’s blunt response asks Stewart to take responsibility for her “failed show.” “Your performance was terrible in that the show lacked mood, temperament and just about everything a show needs for success,” he wrote. “I knew it would fail as soon as I first saw it â– and your low ratings bore me out.”

Ouch.

“Between your daughter, with her one-word statements, your letter writing and, most importantly, your totally unconvincing demeanor, it never had a chance — much as your daytime show is not exactly setting records,” he wrote.

Then he really told her what he thought.

“Essentially, you made this firing up just as you made up your sell order of ImClone,” said Trump, who claimed NBC did not intend to fire him on Stewart’s show.

Ouch, indeed. I doubt Stewart received that much verbal abuse while serving out her prison sentence.