Fired ‘Apprentice’ just couldn’t keep quiet

That criticism didn’t exactly endear Lee to his project manager, though. With the camera hovering nearby, Tarek threatened him, but in a collegial, “please don’t force me to hit you” sort of way. “I’m committed to not bringing you into the boardroom,” Tarek told Lee. “I’m just going to need you to stand by me in front of Trump. I just warn you, if you bring up to Trump anything that you would have changed or done differently, you are immediately going to set yourself up as a target.”

Lee, thankfully, ignored the friendly advice of his good buddy Tarek, and when Trump asked him directly about Tarek’s leadership, Lee didn’t hold back, and Tarek made good on his promise, hauling Lee back into the boardroom to possibly be fired.

Earlier, Tarek told us, “Being in Mensa, the one thing that it allows me to do is think on my feet very quickly. And I think when you’re blessed with the ability to think quickly and think on your feet, that is going to separate you from the pack.”

He put that insulting description of intelligence to use in the boardroom, going with the say-one-thing, then-contradict-yourself strategy of argument. “As project leader, I take responsibility for this loss,” he said, and Trump beamed. Then Tarek blamed his team for the loss, and said his leadership was flawless: “But it’s important to note that we lost not because of a lack of leadership, we lost because two people on this team did not step up and execute on the task to which they were assigned.”

Zip it! Zip! ZIP!
This petty backstabbing didn’t work, just as it usually does not; of the three people Tarek brought into the boardroom — Summer, Lenny, and Lee — only Summer deserved to be there. That brought Trump’s attention right back to Tarek, where it would have stayed had Summer not interrupted. For someone who brags about his bountiful intelligence, Tarek failed to demonstrate any “Apprentice” street smarts.

The only person who seemed to understand how the game is played is Lenny, the man Trump twice obnoxiously referred to as “the Russian.” Lenny was born in the former USSR, served in the Soviet Army, and “built himself up from a janitor to the eventual owner of his own Russian restaurant,” according to his bio. Later, he “became a stockbroker” and “now operates his own medical trading company,” and applied for the show only because his son is a fan of the show and convinced him to apply. If his son briefed him on what to expect, it would not be at all surprising.

Before the boardroom, Lenny gave Summer a pep talk that, at the time, sounded condescending. “When we go into the boardroom I want you to be quiet. Please. All right? Don’t bring anything up. All right? Just be quiet. We heard you already. We kick asses. We’ll be fine,” he said.

As it turned out, Summer’s inability to read a situation or know what to expect with Trump made Lenny’s lecture completely justified. Lenny knew that Summer’s tendency to talk for no reason wouldn’t go over well with Trump, and that she could potentially prevent Tarek — the bigger threat to Lenny — from being fired.

But she didn’t follow Lenny's advice, and took the fall. As Tarek left the boardroom, Trump reminded him that he was safe only because her stupidity outweighed his. “She saved your ass with her own stupidity,” he said. “She saved your ass.”

That might be a line viewers hear from Trump often, because based upon their performance during the first task, stupidity isn’t in short supply.

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