Adam Carolla Show

The book is called Apprentice in Wonderland. I spent the last two and a half years working on it. I interviewed Donald Trump six times for it. And it really looks into his psyche and who he is, what he's like. And I know, Adam, you were on The Apprentice with him.

He was happiest when he got to talk about what it was like hosting The Apprentice. He was energized. He was engaged. He was hyper hyped. Talked about how great it was.

He wants to make good TV but this is a fun, quick read where you really get in his head and he talks about his place in pop culture which is the thing that he loves to talk about.

It is kind of true that you don't know anything about Woodrow Wilson but you know more about Flip Wilson than Woodrow Wilson.

He does a thing he did it to me he did it when we did Marriage Ref together the Seinfeld produced show Tom Papahos he came up to me in the green room was he, I and Gloria Estefan on that day and he told me this episode was gonna be number one and it was gonna be the best episode they ever had and it was gonna crush in the ratings and I was backstage kind of going why? I mean it's me, it's Gloria Estefan it's you I don't know this is pre-Trump Trump and he went he put his hand on my back he like slapped me on the back and he goes you check those ratings tomorrow I guarantee we're number one we're gonna crush it all and this is gonna be awesome and we like walked out and for the first time really in my whole adult life I felt good like I stood up a little straight and I went maybe we are number one keep saying that my world view is what's gonna be and if you say it enough people don't fact check you don't go back the next day and say so were we not was it the best rated show ever people just assume that it was and they roll forward with it I knew it wasn't but I felt good for that moment and that's what it is and I think the other side of how the poverty and how we're oppressing this people get bummed out and they just go fuck it I wanna be number one again if we're number one or not I don't care put on a hat he doesn't let facts get in the way of what he wants to say and that's why he's such a great reality star

I think that Ivanka clearly is his favorite he talked about Ivanka I asked him actually which of your kids was best on The Apprentice and he wouldn't say and then he said Ivanka was great but I also think Ivanka loved the show because she was not known she didn't have a job right there was no she wasn't working for anyone and so she got to be on the show she got to launch her jewelry line her shoe line and she got to be president and so they were really close it's interesting because they were really close when he was host of The Apprentice and maybe not so much now given all the backlash and all the tension and all the stress that was put on the family when their father became president so it is all very really interesting but my book is an anthropological study about how Donald Trump got here how did millions of Americans believe that because of The Apprentice this guy who was in the boardroom and you didn't have the greatest experience with him but he was always very entertaining on TV and funny how did he take that and convince the American public that he could be in the Oval Office and he could deal with national security he could deal with health crises such as COVID he could deal with foreign diplomacy he could meet Kim Jong-un and he's running the White House and ran the White House like a reality show that became very clear to me the way he talked about world leaders and dictators and enemies and frenemies he took the whole template from The Apprentice and moved it into the White House and that is really really fascinating and the fact that he was able to do that I think history will look back and look at this first reality TV president that we had and talk about how important pop culture is and how powerful it is in storytelling

And I think by the way I don't think we should wholesalely dismiss somebody who wants to run the state or the city or the country like a business I'm not saying that's what we're saying Trump is doing but what I'm saying is in general I've said it for a million years I'm some business guy running like we had Rick Caruso run for governor out here I should say mayor of Los Angeles Rick Caruso is a very successful developer does commercial real estate does the Grove he's a very clean and orderly and secure and you'd let your kids run around there and when it came time to vote for mayor I was like get Rick Caruso in here and let's clean up this goddamn piece of shit town we're living in with homeless and garbage everywhere and I was like he's not a politician I'll try anybody other than the career politicians that are currently running LA into the ground so like conceptually the businessman running the state, the country as a business I'll sign off on that as a concept but I'm curious what you guys think about that I think it's well I want to hear what Rumi to me though he's a carny versus like to me, forgive me I think the best what I would most want in the president is what you get never be less than the second smartest person in every room you walk into that's what Obama and Bill Clinton were and they went into this is more fraudulent stuff like I say I hear you on the legit businessman thing Trump goes into NATO and goes why are we paying the lion's share of the NATO bill you guys aren't paying enough money you should be paying in more it's your security why are we paying for all of it that's like a business-y kind of move and he was probably right he was right about a lot of energy stuff in Europe you're going to cut off all your natural gas and oil then you're going to end up getting it from Russia and then you want us to protect you from Russia you're paying Russia you shouldn't cut that off you shouldn't go green or whatever that's business-esque I mean you can make fun of Trump all you want as a sort of clown but those are kind of business things and he's right about some of those business things so I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater like some of those decisions are like I sit at home you're going to end up getting all your oil from Russia and then you're going to be funding their war machine thoughts?

I didn't interview Biden so I can't really speak to Biden but the thing about Trump that's interesting and the rating story that was really interesting is that he is so driven by ratings and it's an extension of the ratings become poll numbers and he kind of got convinced to run for president because he had good polling and then said he'd run and then he ended up winning and he's now in the White House and it's not really what he's good at he's good at being in a boardroom having editors rearrange his words getting to be funny getting people to like him saying you're fired having people cheer for him and so when you take away the reality TV he's still creating his own reality he has these lines that he says we're number one, we're number one, we're number one, makes people feel good but it is all sort of about the personality that he developed on that show so much of who he is on the White House is the personality he developed on the show and that was what was interesting to me spending time with him I got to see that he hadn't changed I interviewed him before he was on The Apprentice and then he went to the White House and came back and we spent a lot of time together and he hadn't changed he was still really invested in pop culture and being at the center of the conversation and I think by the way I don't think we should wholesalely dismiss somebody who wants to run the state or the city or the country like a business I'm not saying that's what we're saying Trump is doing but what I'm saying is in general I've said it for a million years I'm some business guy running like we had Rick Caruso run for governor out here I should say mayor of Los Angeles Rick Caruso is a very successful developer does commercial real estate does the Grove he's a very clean and orderly and secure and you'd let your kids run around there and when it came time to vote for mayor I was like get Rick Caruso in here and let's clean up this goddamn piece of shit town we're living in with homeless and garbage everywhere and I was like he's not a politician I'll try anybody other than the career politicians that are currently running LA into the ground so like conceptually the businessman running the state, the country as a business I'll sign off on that as a concept but I'm curious what you guys think about that I think it's well I want to hear what Rumi to me though he's a carny versus like to me, forgive me I think the best what I would most want in the president is what you get never be less than the second smartest person in every room you walk into that's what Obama and Bill Clinton were and they went into this is more fraudulent stuff like I say I hear you on the legit businessman thing Trump goes into NATO and goes why are we paying the lion's share of the NATO bill you guys aren't paying enough money you should be paying in more it's your security why are we paying for all of it that's like a business-y kind of move and he was probably right he was right about a lot of energy stuff in Europe you're going to cut off all your natural gas and oil then you're going to end up getting it from Russia and then you want us to protect you from Russia you're paying Russia you shouldn't cut that off you shouldn't go green or whatever that's business-esque I mean you can make fun of Trump all you want as a sort of clown but those are kind of business things and he's right about some of those business things so I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater like some of those decisions are like I sit at home you're going to end up getting all your oil from Russia and then you're going to be funding their war machine thoughts?

I don't think he's a clown and someone asked me the other day is he stupid and I said absolutely not I think he's very smart he knows what he's doing but he's a performance artist and so I guess the analogy I would use is when you get on an airplane do you want the pilot to be someone who actually knows how to fly a plane or do you want someone who's an actor who can actually fly a plane and Donald Trump for most purposes is an actor he's a smart, funny, charismatic person when he wants to be I like spending time with him I thought he could be very charming he could be funny his stories were entertaining he would get off track he wouldn't remember things and then get back on track it was a rollercoaster being with him and it's very hard interviewing him because he can't stay to one story he goes from being on The Apprentice to like what word is next you don't know what word is going to come up next there's no train of thought between one subject and the next

He and I talked about that. That was actually a question he asked me over and over again. And he said that in his heart, he thought he would probably still be elected, but a lot of people around him, including his son, Eric, talked about how the show was the blueprint for the campaign.

I mean, it's not provable or disprovable and it makes sense. I mean, I don't know that you could say that, you know, carved in stone and there's no other way because there's-

It's what middle America thinks the CEO should be like. Right. If you actually sat down with a real CEO-

I had Donald Jr., I think, came on this show once. And I read his book, preparing for the interview. And in his book, it said he'd spent so much time on a construction site growing up that he could tell the difference between a sawzall and a skill saw or hypoid saw or chop saw or orbital sander just by the sound of it.

So he did grow up on a construction site or he just got super lucky, but he knew the sound of every tool. So all I'm saying is with Trump, it's easy to go, this guy's a clown.

He's not as successful as he claims. He's not as smart as he claims. He's not as tough as he claims. It's the in between that is the truth.

Apprentice in Wonderland is the name of the books and available now wherever you find finer books. I like to add the finer part. It was a part of my childhood.

I wrote The United States of Trump which is a look at man from the time he was a baby traces his ancestry back all the way to when he won the white house and it's a very objective book is I I I'll g in a book I now believe that trump has never gotten over the apprentice that the apprentice was a high mark of his life as far as excitement and in the apprentice if you remember it I did it I'm gonna say oh you were on it that's right trump could say anything he wanted to say anything it was never challenged he's the boss you're fired get the hell out of here and he took that mindset that apprentice mindset into the political arena right still to this day he doesn't have to say all of this stuff I mean I'm sitting there I'm going why on earth if you want to be re-elected are you talking about Haitians eating dogs and cats when there is absolutely no evidence that happened.

it's called cancel culture and you've been discussing that for years now

we have witch hunts today as you know

the far left is using it now to wipe out their enemies

it's really a harrowing story when you get through with this book and I'm not even going to mention we take you to the movie set of the exorcist

sold 90,000 copies in the first six days, excellent Halloween book you can give it to the urchins when they come for candy, candy will hurt them, the killing series will frighten the bejesus out of them

And Then There Were None was a great book.

And he's like, God damn, this guy's a fucking hack. He's a horrible writer.

And by the way, his stuff, this Dianetic stuff and all this stuff, I mean, it's fantastic bullshit.

David Letterman at the academy awards in the mid 90s said the line from Forrest Gump Forrest Gump said life is like a box of chocolate now he says life was like a box of chocolate

"Married...with Children vs. the World: The Inside Story of the Shock-Com That Launched FOX and Changed TV Comedy Forever" is available now wherever books are sold.

I really thought this was way too far out for network television

They said specifically we've got to do something different to pull the audiences away from merge

They came to Ron and Michael and they came to other other other producers you know that were big at the time and they said do something different to put us on the map and that's that's exactly how it started. It was it was you talk about businesses that are disruptive now this was a disruptive network

It's a good read. I think people are gonna like it.

American Psycho, rules of attraction, less than zero

It's the same concept. You think this is such a fantastic story and what a story. But it actually really fucking happened.

Yeah, with Shia LaBeouf and Sigourney Weaver and John Voight and Patricia Arquette and Dule Hill and took place in the desert, 20 year anniversary of "Holes". We had an incredible screening.

Well, see they left it off my list. Yeah. Yeah "Holes" was...oh no, it is here. Yeah, I got it. Sorry, his late father Nathan Davis played Shia LaBeouf's grandfather in "Holes" in 2011.

It was a word winning book now the the Lewis Sackers novel won the Newbery Award in the National Book Award for children and so was beloved by teachers and all kinds of people and and and We got to adapt it and and the only thing I changes I said to Lewis, you know...

Bare Knuckle: Bobby Gunn 73-0. A dad. A dream. A fight like you've never seen.

Bare Knuckle: Bobby Gunn 73-0. A dad. A dream. A fight like you've never seen.

They rescued photographs you didn't know existed. Put it all down while you could still get the straight story about people like these two sons of a Baptist minister. They staged the first daylight bank robbery in U.S.A. Frank and Jesse James.

Here's Clay Allison. Call himself a shooter. Here's Drew Henderson. Here's Ricker Matt Masterson who wound up a New York sports writer.

And what kind of lady was wanted for horse stealing and bootlegging? That was no lady. That was Bell Star. John Wesley Harton. The Texas Rangers caught up with him. He shot 44 men, one of them just for snoring too loud. And that's in your first book alone, The Gun Fighters.

And much of the lore, many of the sayings that are attributed to Winston Churchill, he never said. And that's how history is written.

I'll give it 50-50 that he actually shot a man for snoring.

Stay classy with Inker Man, The Legend of Ron Burgundy or Go Behind Enemy Lines streaming Saving Private Ryan.

I'm going to go with the book, The Truth About Fauci by Kennedy.

American Psycho, rules of attraction, less than zero

American Psycho, rules of attraction, Less Than Zero

It was like reading Field of Dreams.

Not one, but two New York Times bestsellers in 50 years, Wallaby Chicks and not Taco Bell material.

You'll find it in my book. It's at the head of, I think in 50 Years of Alvichicks or something, because at some point in Phoenix, some sea captain pulled in next to me, like, full gray beard guy. And the guy said the same.

They have over 100,000 books to choose from, including Not Taco Bell material and 50 Years of Wallaby Chicks.

There's a whole chapter for 50 Years of Wallaby Chicks or Not Taco Bell material that's dedicated to Ray.