Donald Trump Wildly Claims Joan Rivers Voted for Him in 2016 Election — Even Though She Died Two Years Earlier
June 14 2024, Published 4:00 p.m. ET
Donald Trump once claimed that comedian and actress Joan Rivers voted for him in the 2016 presidential election, RadarOnline.com has learned, even though Rivers passed away more than two years earlier.
The former president reportedly made the false claim during a recent interview with author and Variety editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh for Setoodeh's new book, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass.
According to Trump, he "thought [Rivers] might have been a Republican." He also claimed that Rivers told him directly that she voted for him for president.
“I thought she might have been a Republican,” Trump told Setoodeh during an interview for Apprentice in Wonderland, according to Daily Mail. “I know one thing: she voted for me, according to what she said.”
But it should be noted that Rivers passed away from cerebral hypoxia on September 4, 2014 – a whopping two years and two months before the 2016 presidential election. She was 81.
Meanwhile, Trump also spoke at length about The Apprentice and its later iteration, The Celebrity Apprentice, during his interview with Setoodeh.
Rivers starred in the second season of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2009 and went on to win that season.
“I mean, I got the biggest stars to go on that show. It was so easy,” the ex-president told Setoodeh, according to one passage from Apprentice in Wonderland. “You know Joan Rivers wouldn't do a show like that normally, right?”
Still, Rivers and Trump’s professional relationship was not without its issues – especially after Trump fired the comedian’s daughter, Melissa Rivers, from The Celebrity Apprentice in April 2009.
“Joan was so angry,” Trump recounted. “She went crazy when I fired the daughter.”
“Joan loved Melissa more than anything she's ever loved before,” he continued. “She thought Melissa was the end-all, and she went totally crazy in defense of her daughter.”
“Oh, they were both yelling,” Trump added. “It was great TV. But maybe Joan had more of a right to be yelling.
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Trump’s claim that Rivers voted for him in 2016 – even though she passed away two years earlier – also came years after Melissa Rivers revealed that her late mother most likely would have voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump that election year.
“She knew them both,” Melissa Rivers told Whoopi Goldberg in 2017. “Our families had a very long, outside-of-the-spotlight relationship with the whole Trump family.”
“I think in the beginning she would have been like: Yes, great, great, great super,” she said of her late mother. “And then she would have been like: Oh, s---.”
“I think in the end of it all, she would have definitely been a Hillary supporter.”