Trump Might Appoint Apprentice Loser as Miami Prosecutor, So We Watched the Episode Where He Gets Fired

Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz (not to be confused with Miami-Dade County Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz) was fired after two episodes on the reality show The Apprentice in 2006. He’d been tasked with coming up with a business proposal for Gillette, which was trying to sell some sort of five-razor-blade monstrosity to insecure men. Diaz ended up sleeping in on the day of his pitch and was fired for lack of leadership.

So, as a consolation prize, the president of the United States of America might appoint Diaz as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Politico’s Marc Caputo reported Friday. Diaz would become South Florida’s top federal prosecutor in charge of cracking down on drug cartels and money-laundering rings.

Florida voters have already decided that being awful at reality television does not preclude a person from making life-altering decisions about public health, prison sentencing, or taxable income. In 2010, Miami elected Diaz, a Republican, to the Florida House of Representatives.

But there’s zero chance Trump is considering Diaz because of his record in the state House. Aside from Goldman Sachs employees and retired generals, Trump pretty much exclusively hires from the rancid pile of Ivy League has-beens that helped prop up his fraudulent business career over the past three decades. A source also told Politico that Trump cares about the Southern District of Florida because Mar-a-Lago sits within its confines. This quadruples the likelihood that Trump is interviewing Pepi because Diaz owes the president a favor after Trump put the now-legislator on television.

Just ran into the first guy who ever fired me. The next president of the United States @realDonaldTrump #Apprentice #POTUS #ElPresidente pic.twitter.com/4q9BUTeOHN

— Rep. Jose Felix Diaz (@josefelixdiaz) January 19, 2017

Because the president of the United States has decided that a person’s reality-TV appearances are the only resumé items that matter anymore, New Times watched the two (and only two) episodes in which Diaz got to hang out with the Donald.

Here’s a scene-by-scene recap.

Episode 1: Pepi Skates By

Cold open. A helicopter camera hovers around the infamous Trump plane, which sits on the tarmac at a nondescript airport we’re made to believe is not somewhere in the bowels of New York City. Then! A silver Mercedes coupe rockets out of the dust at a speed that can only be described as illegal and warranting the attention of the TSA and U.S. Marshals. But look who’s driving! It’s Donald Trump! Alone, with no bags or fellow passengers! Who clearly isn’t actually driving anything and is just making “vroom” noises with his mouth in front of a green screen!

Trump, in voiceover, announces he has handpicked 18 candidates from “more than a million” applicants for Season 5 of The Apprentice. As the camera pans to some of them (“I went to Harvard Business School!” “I run a Fortune 200 company!” “I’m the world’s largest purveyor of urine-based pornography!”), we’re treated to our first shot of Pepi, who sits brooding in the back of a taxi.

We’re then shown some stock footage of Trump’s plane wonkily landing at Long Island’s private Republic Airport. Trump picks up a landline phone and says to no one, “I’ve just landed, I’m going to meet the candidates, and then I’ll be in in an hour.” We’re never told whom Trump is talking to or where he had to go. He’s just busy, just like other Real New York Businesspeople! Trump then promises every contestant they’ll become very rich, own planes just like his, and do some “good things” and “maybe some bad things” too, but they’ll have “a lot of fun.”

Trump chooses two random people to serve as team leaders, including one douchey-looking guy named Tarek just because Tarek claimed he had a huge IQ. In a harbinger of things to come, Pepi was picked third-to-last. The camera does not love Pepi.

Trump announces that, mere minutes after meeting 18 strangers, he’s handing each of them a Goodyear blimp and demanding they use the dirigible to drive business to the big-box store Sam’s Club.

“I’m Pepi,” Pepi Pepis to someone who is not Pepi. “My real name is José, but they call me Pepi.”

“All right, Pepi,” team leader Allie responds, deadpan.

Cut to commercial!

After the break, the team sits inside a van on the way to a Sam’s Club in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and works on selecting a name. Brent, whom everyone seems to hate just because he’s chubby (he was chosen last), throws out the name “Killer Instinct Corporation,” which the fun-hating team reacts to with pure bodily revulsion, as if he’d suggested calling the squad the “Loyal Warriors of Pol Pot.”

Instead, our boy Pepi throws out the name “Synergy Corporation,” a name so nondescript and boring the nine douche-tycoons jump right on it. Pepi has now shown himself to be a Reliable Team Member, unlike Brent, who Is Weird and Sucks. (Pepi explains that the word “synergy” somehow means “energy,” which it most certainly does not.) The other team calls itself “Gold Rush.”

Team Synergy then sits at a meeting table and continues picking on Brent for no reason. (In fact, Brent has been the only person throwing out ideas so far.) We’re treated to a few choice shots of Pepi groaning and rolling his eyes at Brent, That Weirdo. Synergy decides to use the blimp to attract people to Sam’s Club and then offer free manicures and massages to try to persuade people to buy Sam’s Club memberships. Because nothing says “relaxing” like getting rubbed down by predatory lenders inside a remote warehouse that also sells bulk packages of frozen cod. The team ultimately decides to stash Brent inside the zeppelin.

Team Gold Rush, meanwhile, just puts a really big Sam’s Club ad on the blimp.

Commercial break!

We’re next transported to Trump’s boardroom, which is lit like Gollum’s cave in The Hobbit. With zero hint of enthusiasm, Trump and his business adviser announce that Team Gold Rush sold 40 new Sam’s Club memberships. Synergy, however, sold 43.

“You’re the winners. Congratulations,” Trump says. As a reward, Trump blesses Team Synergy with lunch at the Wharton Club at the University of Pennsylvania, Trump’s alma mater. Trump then warns Team Gold Rush that one of its members will get the ax. (Brent magically survives.)

As Gold Rush bickers over whom Trump ought to fire, Pepi and Synergy Corporation hang out in a random boardroom at Penn. Set to what appears to be the soft-rock hold music from Time Warner Cable’s customer service line, Trump tells the crowd of fawning bootlickers not to worry so much about the trappings of Wealth and Fame whenever King Trump bestows Wealth and Fame upon them.

“What I do to get rid of pressure is say it doesn’t matter,” Trump says. “It makes life a lot easier. Do you understand what I mean by that? We think it’s so important what we’re doing, and you know, for us, it’s important. But if you really think about it, you’ll have an earthquake in India where 100,000 people die. There’s a huge problem going on in Africa where so many people are being killed, just viciously. And if you really think about it, what we’re doing, is it really so important?”

They toast. Trump then gets ready to fire Gold Rush’s team leader, Tarek – until a woman named Summer interrupts Trump while he’s talking. He calls her “stupid” and then fires her instead for talking out of line. Everyone hugs Tarek and congratulates him. The Republic advances another day toward obsolescence.

Episode 2: Pepi Fucks Up, Gets Fired, and Tries to Pin His Failures on Someone Else, Because Reality TV is Ephemeral and Meaningless

Now shit is getting real. Show producer Mark Burnett Pepi decides this episode is going to be All About Pepi: In a limo, Trump pulls up to a random street corner in New York City as the crowd of apprentices strolls up to meet him. Trump exits alongside one former Apprentice winner and Ivanka, whom Trump says will act as his “eyes and ears” this episode. He then explains to the crowd that text-messaging is the New Important Technology of Today and that – that’s right – they’re gonna have to use it to sell some shit.

“Even though we’re outside, there are people all around you doing business,” Trump says. (We see some shots of besuited people staring at their phones.) “With today’s technology, people can leave the office and still get their work done via text messaging.” (Do people do this?) “Text messaging is a method of sending a brief written message from one phone to another. This is a new technology to me. It’s old technology to you, but to me, what the hell do I know about text messaging?” The crowd of cretins laughs.

Trump announces that the “very great Gillette company” needs to sell its five-blade Fusion razor.

“I think the women can use it, but not necessarily for their face,” Trump belches at the camera. He then immediately kisses Ivanka goodbye after making a joke that tacitly references women’s pubic hair. The teams need to sell said razor via spam text messages. Whichever team gets more strangers to text a specific keyword to Gillette’s phone line wins.

Pepi then gives the camera a face-to-face interview in which he announces he was told by producers voluntarily stepped up to act as team leader this week.

“Can anybody think of something that might make someone in New York City stop… and text-message?” a newly emboldened Pepi asks team Synergy. Brent, whom the team still treats like a leper, says he has a few ideas, but other team members interrupt him. In a face-to-face interview, a team member named Stacy says Brent has “zero skills” despite the fact that Brent remains the only person on the team proposing actual ideas. Pepi, who – we repeat – is now a sitting lawmaker, tolerates the abuse.

Brent then follows Stacy into an elevator and yells at her. Stacy begs for some “team support.”

“You guys had a confrontation?” Pepi asks, like a real rube.

Trump then randomly pops onto the screen for his weekly piece of advice: Some well-dressed people, he warns, turn out to be “losers.” Some poorly dressed people are smart. He then literally tells viewers not to judge a book by its cover.

Then we’re back to the teams: Team Gold Rush is also fighting about something meaningless. In the meantime, Team Synergy is pissed at Pepi for doing nothing about Brent.

“Pepi needed to be more decisive in how he addressed Brent,” Team Member Tammy says. After pressure from the rest of the group, Pepi sends Brent home for the day.

“As project manager, I was conflicted, because I did not know exactly what object was going to be best,” Pepi says totally organically and not from a script. This man now writes laws. Pepi, how are we to trust you with prosecuting drug kingpins if you can’t get tough on one admittedly dumpy-looking lawyer?

Team Synergy’s members then decide to wear some random bathrobes in the middle of New York and direct people to text Gillette to find out why.

Let’s pause for a second: This is New York City. Someone could be spurting blood from an aorta, and strangers wouldn’t stop for a second to ask if that person needs help. Do you think strangers in bathrobes will freak people out? Crazy people in New York write the entire text of Anna Karenina on subway windows using raccoon bile. Nobody cares about some randos in bathrobes. Pepi, your idea is bush league.

In the next scene, we learn that every member of Team Synergy inexplicably sleeps together in the same room. At 6:40 a.m., a team member frantically wakes Team Synergy and is furious that Pepi let everyone oversleep. Team Gold Rush got up at 5:30! Pepi, you buffoon! Pepi and some teammates eat a few bowls of cereal together in their bathrobes.

As we predicted, folks in Times Square don’t care about strangers in bathrobes. We see a shot of Pepi staring directly at a wall, thus illustrating how poorly things are going.

Brent then does the robot dance to try to attract people. Team Member Stacy acts as if he just committed war crimes.

In the end, Pepi’s team lost, 683 texts to 458 texts. Trump tells the Synergy members hey “got creamed.” As a reward, Gold Rush gets to volunteer at a charity for the homeless. Pepi gets nothing.

In the next scene, the folks on Team Synergy say they’re worried Brent is about to snap and murder people. They accuse Brent of being mentally unstable. Pepi not only tolerates the gossip but also joins in.

“There’s no human being who could be like Brent,” Pepi says to the camera. “He might as well be wearing a big red nose and big-ass shoes. He’s a clown.”

The team members then file into Trump’s boardroom-cave, where Pepi doubles down and, like a coward, tries to blame Brent for everything.

“I think that a large part of why we failed at this task has to do with the fact that we were heavily distracted by Brent,” Pepi says. Trump isn’t seeing it. Pepi doubles down and even laughs when Trump tries to claim that Brent, who is a lawyer, is a smart guy. Nearly everyone begs Trump to fire Brent because his robot-dancing sucked. But Trump isn’t having any of it: After deliberating with Ivanka, Trump fires Stacy and Pepi.

“The team leader didn’t lead, you lost the respect of the rest of the team, and, Pepi, I have to say, you also are fired,” Trump says, in what might or might not have been an English sentence.

So what have we learned?
Nothing. Except for the fact that The Apprentice is bullshit, Trump has always been a know-nothing con artist, his business tips include brilliant lines like “don’t judge a book by its cover,” and anyone who appeared on this show ought to be immediately disqualified from holding public office. (Also, everyone who watched this nonsense is a sucker.)

It is, frankly, astounding that Diaz was able to win an election given this footage of him exists and can be found easily online. People donated more than $113,000 to this man after Trump fired him. Abolish the Florida House of Representatives.