Trump Says ‘You Can Be Evil’ Because ‘There’s Only One Thing That Matters, and That’s Ratings’

In newly released audio, former President Donald Trump said that “it doesn’t matter” if a person is the “most horrible human being” because all that matters are ratings.

Author Ramin Setoodeh has written a new post-presidency biography about Trump titled, Apprentice in Wonderland – a nod to the former president’s old NBC show. In recent weeks, Setoodeh has furnished multiple outlets with audio of conversations he had with Trump. Last month, the author revealed that Trump told him that ratings are “ my whole life .”

The latest audio clip of Trump underscores that sentiment. During Tuesday’s Deadline: White House on MSNBC, Nicolle Wallace aired the following remarks from the ex-president:

So, if I went back to NBC right now to do something, they would do anything I wanted to do, showbiz-wise, I’m talking about. Doing a show, anything I wanted to do right now, 100%. Because one thing I know about that business, and I learned more about that business than anybody else could learn in a short period of time. It’s about one thing: ratings. If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world. There’s only one thing that matters: ratings…

You can be nice, or you can be mean. You can be evil. You can be horrible. You can be crude or elegant. There’s only one thing that matters and that’s ratings. If you don’t have ratings, it doesn’t matter.

In his book, Setoodeh said that while visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence, the former president was fixated on 20-year-old Nielsen ratings for the first season finale of The Apprentice .

“Trump is looking at a page from the Nielsen ratings published in a 2004 issue of Variety… from the week after the airing of The Apprentice’s first-season finale,” Setoodeh wrote . “It’s framed and bolted to the wall… something that seems to carry as much value to him as the U.S. Constitution, if not more… This sheet of paper comes from an America where The Apprentice was, if only for a single week, the No. 1 show… ‘This is my whole life,’ Trump says.”

Setoodeh told MSNBC last month “how little [Trump] actually cares about governing” and that “he’s only interested in show business.”

Listen above via MSNBC.