Donald Trump claimed that Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016, despite the comedian having died two years earlier.
The former US president and recently convicted felon was interviewed by Variety editor Ramin Setoodeh last November for a new book about his time hosting The Apprentice, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, which is set to be published on June 18.
In the book, Trump discusses Rivers, who won the second season of Celebrity Apprentice in 2009.
“I thought she might have been a Republican,” Trump said. “I know one thing: she voted for me, according to what she said.”
This claim is impossible as Trump first stood for election on November 8, 2016. Rivers died on September 4, 2014 at the age of 81.
In the month before that election, Trump claimed to Fox News’s Sean Hannity that he feared voter fraud using dead voters would swing the election for his opponent. “You have 1.8 million people who are dead, who are registered to vote, and some of them absolutely vote,” said Trump. “Now, tell me how they do that.” Trump’s claims were refuted.
Trump also recalled Rivers’s reaction after he fired her daughter, Melissa, who competed on the same season of Celebrity Apprentice.
“Joan was so angry,” said Trump. “She went crazy when I fired the daughter.”
“Joan loved Melissa more than anything she’s ever loved before. She thought Melissa was the end-all, and she went totally crazy in defense of her daughter. Oh, they were both yelling. It was great TV. But maybe Joan had more of a right to be yelling.”
Elsewhere in the book, Trump described Taylor Swift as “unusually beautiful” but “liberal”.
Asked his opinion of the pop superstar, Trump replied: “She’s got a great star quality. She really does.”
He continued: “I think she’s beautiful – very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually – unusually beautiful!”
Asked specifically what he thinks of her music, Trump admitted: “Don’t know it well.”
He went on to question whether the pop superstar really is politically liberal, asking: “She is liberal, or is that just an act? She’s legitimately liberal? It’s not an act? It surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal.”
When Setoodeh pointed out that Swift is no longer purely a country artist, Trump responded: “Garth Brooks is liberal. Explain that! How does it happen? But he’s liberal. It’s one of those things...”
