It's a realization that seemed to hit him after 14 seasons and several years later. On Thursday, Donald Trump appeared to have realized what The Apprentice meant, after years of hosting the show that propelled him to reality TV stardom.
It happened while he was speaking at the launch of a jobs initiative at the White House. "Today we're asking businesses and organizations across the country to sign our new Pledge to America’s Workers," Trump said. "Today 23 companies and associations are pledging to expand apprenticeships."
After uttering "apprenticeships," the president paused and said, "That's an interesting word for me to be saying, right? The Apprentice. I never actually put that together until just now. That was a good experience, I will tell you that."
The president then turned to his daughter, who was present. "Isn’t that strange, Ivanka, I never associated, but here we are," he told her. "[I] can't get away from that word. It's a great word."
It may come as somewhat of a surprise that Trump apparently had never made this obvious connection before, given that the president has repeatedly touted himself as a "very stable genius." He's also bragged about having high IQ in the past.
Prior to becoming the president of the United States, Trump tweeted in 2013, "Sorry, losers and haters. But my IQ is one of the highest and you all know it! Please do not feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault." Here is the president realizing, maybe a little too late, that The Apprentice was about apprenticeships after all.
The White House event on Thursday where Trump made his comment about apprenticeships was for the launch of a workforce initiative, the Pledge to America's Workers, that his daughter Ivanka has all but taken the lead on. According to his statement, the pledge is "committing to train and re-train more than 3.8 million American students and workers for new jobs and rewarding careers."
This won't be the first time that Trump has had a bit of a linguistic gaffe. The president has occasionally misspelled words or mixed up the meanings of other, and often in tweets sent out to millions of his followers on the platform. Recently, Harry Potter series author J. K. Rowling had a hearty laugh on Twitter after Trump mixed up "pour" and "pore."
In that tweet, Trump had said, "After having written many best selling books, and somewhat priding myself on my ability to write, it should be noted that the Fake News constantly likes to pour over my tweets looking for a mistake. I capitalize certain words only for emphasis, not [because] they should be capitalized!" This seemed to tickle Rowling's funny bone.
The president's frequent gaffes have led to spikes in clicks for online dictionaries to, perhaps, understand the meaning, use — and, yes, the actual spelling of words. It won't be a surprise if the same apparent realization from Trump today leads to interest in the definition of "apprenticeships." But it's likely that most people at least made the association between the word and the title of his show.
