Trump should have hired both women

Before Donald Trump chose his third "Apprentice," he had the two remaining candidates select the jobs they’d take if selected.

Kendra Todd decided she’d like to redevelop a mansion in Palm Beach, her hometown, while Tana Goertz chose to run the Miss Universe pageant. Kendra’s background in real estate and Tana’s energy and creativity were perfect fits for the jobs they chose.

After a 16-minute recap of this season, in which Trump shouted at us about Kendra and Tana’s performance throughout the season, it became clear that both were successful candidates. The winner would clearly deserve her victory, regardless of who was selected.

Faced with such a tossup decision, Donald Trump should have hired both women.

Naming both Kendra and Tana as the next Apprentices would have been an acknowledgment that there aren’t always just two alternatives. Faced with two choices, both can be rejected, as Trump demonstrated this season when he deemed both teams losers for their awful commercials. Alternately, both choices can be embraced.

But this is an era where the false dichotomy reigns. And because Trump is incapable of thinking outside his self-constructed Bristle Block box, he had to create a fake reason to fire one and hire the other.

That fake reason was hammered relentlessly during the finale and during the penultimate episode, and focused on Tana’s interaction with her team. She apologized for her more flippant comments about her teammates, suggesting she was guilty of poor attempts at humor. But that admission had little effect.

Keeping Tana on the defensive
Most of the 45-minute live portion of the finale was used once again to beat up on the obvious loser. Since last week, all signs have pointed to a Tana loss. The evidence continued to mount during the finale on the live boardroom set at NYU, which looked exactly like a courtroom.

Judge Trump was center stage with the fired candidates in a jury box off to the side; to his right and left were his clerks, Carolyn and George. Beside them, his previous apprentices sat, pages ready to respond the second he barked at them.

But Trump didn’t play the part of an even-handed jurist; instead, he kept Tana in a defensive posture and ensured Kendra remained on the offensive. Although we were spared Regis Philbin during this finale, Trump should have at least borrowed from the playbooks of two other daytime TV personalities, Judges Judy and Marilyn Milian, asking questions designed to acquire information so he could render a competent decision.

Instead, his (obviously pre-scripted) queries were idiotic. Trump hammered Tana with the same questions he’d asked before about the way she interacted with her team. After reprimanding Kendra for crying, he asked her if it was a sign of weakness.

During the course of this charade, Trump unexpectedly stumbled upon a truth. That resulted in perhaps the most revelatory moment in three seasons of the show, as we learned that Donald Trump apparently makes his decisions based upon the same cleverly edited footage that viewers see.

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