‘Apprentice’ producers say they created Trump ‘character’

Donald Trump wouldn’t be in the White House without “The Apprentice,” the creators of the former hit reality show claim.

Bill Pruitt, in the Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man,” says the show turned the Trump Tower boardroom into how it looks on TV, based on the “Network” office.

“If you walked around Trump’s actual office in Trump Tower you’d see the wood’s chipped, and what’s that smell?” Pruitt said.

“It wasn’t the empire we were going to have to sell to people. We needed to gussy it up a bit. And we did.”

Director Fisher Stevens said that the goal of “The Confidence Man,” the final episode of the “Dirty Money” docu-series, was to show Trump’s business failures, specifically in the early 1990s.

“We wanted to show people that Donald Trump is not a good businessman when it comes to building a company and managing a company,” he told People, “and I wanted to say how scary it is that he is running the country because he doesn’t do due diligence on any of his deals.”

Pruitt had previously spoken out about Trump’s “lewd, lascivious behavior, and narcissism on set” in an email to Vanity Fair.

“We are masterful storytellers and we did our job well. What’s shocking to me is how quickly and decisively the world bought it. Did we think this clown, this buffoon with the funny hair, would ever become a world leader? Not once. Ever,” he wrote.

“Would he and his bombastic nature dominate in prime-time TV? We hoped so. Now that the lines of fiction and reality have blurred to the horrifying extent that they have, those involved in the media must have their day of reckoning.”

Trump served as the “Apprentice” host for 14 seasons before being replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he began his presidential campaign.