Trump should have hired both women

The shape of things
One of Kendra’s biggest victories was her creation of a slick, circular brochure for Pontiac. In between throwing bowling balls in the form of questions at Tana, Trump tossed another Wiffle ball question to Kendra, asking her why she let her team take credit for the Pontiac brochure. This prompted Tana to reveal that the circular design had actually been her idea, which Kendra admitted was true. Sensing that this was her only chance to shatter Trump’s image of his golden child Kendra, Tana started to freak out, noting that “that shape was the reason they loved it,” and then pumping her fist into the air while shouting “woo! woo!”

Trump was taken aback, and not just by Tana’s channeling of Arsenio Hall; clearly, this new information didn’t fit with his neat, prepackaged idea that Kendra should be his next apprentice.

Who knows what he’d think if he saw other omitted footage, like the scene from last week’s episode that showed Tana being praised by both her team and executives she was working for?

Perhaps Trump would dismiss it, just as he just ignored this surprising new evidence. He said, simply, “Let’s say you both did a good job.” A better idea: Let’s say you’re a myopic billionaire who surrounds himself with people who help attach your blinders every morning.

This behavior has been on display in the boardroom before, when Trump let qualified candidates go for insignificant reasons instead of looking at the broader picture. Right before he hired Kendra, he announced that he was essentially doing so because she performed better during the final task. And he admitted that he was once again ignoring complexity for the sake of simplicity.

Book Smarts-Street Smarts was a false dichotomy
In his final speech, Trump told Tana she was the stronger candidate, even though she did make a mistake on the final task.

“I just didn’t like the way you treated your team. However, for every week other than the last two, you were truly a star, more so, I think, than Kendra,” he said.

Then, Trump decided that he didn’t really want to think about all 17 weeks; he just wanted to think about the last two. He said, “Kendra, in the last couple of weeks, stepped up to the plate and just knocked it out of the stadium.” Then he returned to his central thesis, hiring Kendra because, as he said, “it was amazing what you did with that team. Very much the opposite of Tana, and for that reason, I’m saying, Kendra, you’re hired.”

Seventeen episodes ago, “The Apprentice 3” began as a competition between college-educated people and candidates with only high school diplomas. While dividing the teams based educational experience is more logical than teams divided arbitrarily by sex, the division was still a fake one, a false dichotomy that oversimplified the candidate’s abilities and backgrounds.

That became clear during the live finale when “street smart” finalist Tana admitted that she was just 28 credits short of her college diploma. In other words, the street smart/book smart division was fake and pointless. Distressingly, Trump refused to recognize that choosing between two smart, competent candidates was just as pointless.

Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher who publishes reality blurred, a daily summary of reality TV news.

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