Vivica A. Fox Says That Ivanka Trump Gave Her A Problematic Compliment On “The Celebrity Apprentice”
Probably one of the most memorable interactions from season 14 of The Celebrity Apprentice season was the boardroom (and post-boardroom) fight between Vivica A. Fox and Kenya Moore, which started with Kenya suggesting Vivica was moody due to menopause and ended with Vivica delivering lines like “A toxic trick” and “Baby, I’m an international star” as Kenya packed her things and left. That might be what immediately springs to mind when you or I think of Vivica’s time on The Celebrity Apprentice, but there’s another boardroom conversation that has stuck with her. And it’s courtesy of Ivanka Trump. According to Vivica, Ivanka held true to her awful family’s well-established tradition of saying the kind of problematic, backhanded shit that makes people go, “That’s not a compliment, asshole.”
Vivica got into it during a recent episode of E!’s For Real: The Story of Reality TV, and she kept it real by painting Donald Trump’s daughter as the kind of out-of-touch white lady snob we already pretty much knew her to be. Vivica says that Ivanka met with her team in the boardroom in the first episode. They were still divided by gender, so Ivanka was addressing an all-women team led by Keshia Knight Pulliam. And Vivica says that Ivanka decided to shower her with the kind of praise only Ivanka might find flattering. via Just Jared:
During the board room segment, Ivanka addressed Vivica and said, “You certainly are an articulate group. It’s very impressive hearing you all talk.”
“I’ll never forget that when I did Celebrity Apprentice and Ivanka Trump, she said, ‘Wow, you speak very well.’ I hate to say it. I don’t think she knew at the time that she was insulting us. I really do think she was complimenting us. That it was like, ‘Oh wow, you guys are intelligent.’ Now, I’m going to say when the show aired, Twitter went crazy. Like, what does she mean.”
Of course, whether it was intentional or not, what Ivanka essentially meant when she called several Black women “articulate” and claiming it was impressive to “hear you all talk” is that her expectations for them were pretty low. It also reinforces the belief that white people get to determine how smart a person is. Basically, it’s not a compliment! This isn’t the first time Vivica has spoken about racism on the set of The Celebrity Apprentice. Last year, during an interview with The Guardian, Vivica claimed that she felt producers were pitting white women against Black women and that the Trump children made her feel like “the help,” like with Ivanka’s comment about her speaking well.
Vivica is right in calling Ivanka out with that “articulate” comment because Ivanka literally could have said anything else. Like, “Good presentation,” or “Is Kate Gosselin as scary in real life as she is on TV?“. But maybe Ivanka was sincerely trying to deliver a compliment when she said it was impressive to hear them talk. After all, she basically only communicates with her own family, and those conversations are limited to bragging, 6th-grade reading levels, cheeseburger-chomping wet mouth sounds, the phrase “My father,” and aggressive sniffing.
Pics: Wenn.com