Claudia Jordan the fourth celeb fired from 'The Celebrity Apprentice'

Claudia Jordan became the fourth celebrity contestant to be fired by Donald Trump during last night's broadcast of The Celebrity Apprentice's second season on NBC.


"It really sucks to be the first woman fired and to be project manager of the first task that the women lost because  we were on a roll," the Deal or No Deal suitcase model said following her elimination. "Looking back I definitely lost control of my group, I mean I had some difficult people to work with, but I guess that shouldn't be an excuse. At the end of the day as project manager it falls on me, and you know what? You win some you lose some."

The Celebrity Apprentice's fourth second-season episode began immediately following the previous episode's boardroom session in which Trump fired Tom Green over retired NBA basketball player and former Celebrity Mole Yucatan winner Dennis Rodman. Immediately after leaving the boardroom, Rodman made it clear that he felt he had become divided from the rest of his team.

"There's three teams now, there’s the girl team, the guys team, and my team," Rodman said. "That’s what it seems like to me."

After meeting with his Kings of the Universe (KOTU) teammates, country singer Clint Black offered his own opinion as to why the team had been struggling with team unity an working well under a leader while the girls' team Athena had been thriving.


"I think so many of these guys have been solely in command of their lives and without a boss for so long that they don't get it yet," he said.

Both teams then met with Trump, who was flanked by his two children Donald Jr. and Ivanka, and were told that for their upcoming task they would each had to design a product launch for ACN videophones that would be presented to nearly 500 ACN representatives. Following each team's presentations, the representatives would cast their votes for which one they preferred.  The team that lost the task would end up having one of its members fired in the boardroom, while $20,000 would go to the charity of the winning team's project manager.

The teams both then chose their project managers. KOTU selected R&B singer Brian McKnight to lead their team.

"I decided to be project manager because we've gotten out butts kicked, and this time you're talking about staging an event, that’s pretty much all my life for the last 20 years," he said.

Athena selected Jordan to be their team's project manager.


"This task is probably more suited to my capabilities and my strengths because I'm good at managing people," she said after her selection.

Following their meeting with Trump, both teams met with each other to decide which would present their presentation first. While KOTU discussed what time they wanted, Rodman sat away from the team and didn't participate at all. However, after Black met with professional poker player Annie Duke and decided on the order with a coin toss, Rodman got up and suddenly confronted Black by getting in his face, screaming at him and almost coming to blows with him before storming out of the room screaming "This is a team game!!"

Mostly unaffected by the confrontation, Black said later that Rodman was all "talk" and that he "[wasn't] interested in hitting me."

McKnight added later that while Rodman was "the wild card" of the team who was more concerned with being in "Dennis Land" than with the team, he would not be contacting him to get him back on the team and said that he simply "[didn't] wanna deal with him."

After individual meetings with ACN executives to learn what direction they should look to take their presentation in, the teams split to begin their planning.


For KOTU, former Monster Garage star Jesse James seemed to come up with a majority of the ideas for the team, suggesting that the team travel to West Point -- a military school about 50 miles south of New York City -- to film a vignette about soldiers using a video phone to stay in contact with their families while overseas.

He also suggested that, to keep the attention of the crowd, the team enlist McKnight to perform at their presentation as well.

Athena thought similarly, with former I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here! contestant Melissa Rivers suggesting that her mother Joan Rivers -- whom was away for a comedy show and not at the meeting but would be back in time for the presentation -- emcee their presentation. The team also decided to shoot a series of vignettes as well, with recorded videos interacting with live action actors on the stage as they communicated through their videophones.

Athena quickly had concerns raised regarding Joan's participation in the presentation after learning that she may be delayed and unable to get to New York City in time.

"Right now we're like the Patriots at the Super Bowl without Tom Brady," Jordan said of their team sans the legendary comedian.


However, the problem was soon rectified when LPGA golfer Natalie Gulbis was able to track down a private jet service that she uses to travel to golf tournaments and send it to pick up Joan to get her back to New York in time.

While Jordan, after watching Rodman's meltdown, sensed that KOTU was in disarray, she said that Athena was in a prime position to take a sizable lead. However, as Athena's planning went on, she found that she had her own problems with Melissa, who did not approve of the way that Jordan was acting as project manager.

"I don't think Claudia was leading the team at that point, and I was getting crazy," Melissa said after suggesting many of ideas that would be used in the team's presentation.

After some tense moments and bickering between the two, a catty Jordan made it clear that she didn't think too fondly of Melissa either.

"I don't like her personality, that she looks funny... she scares me," Jordan said. "I don't know if it she's happy or sad or pissed off because it's the same blank look in her eyes, and the forehead doesn't move."


Meanwhile over at KOTU, Rodman eventually resurfaced and joined the team for its planning. After acting somewhat distant from the team, Rodman did eventually suggest that he could save the team several thousand dollars by getting some of the rental equipment for Knight's performance at no charge, however Knight rejected the idea, saying that he didn't want to have to suddenly begin dealing with Rodman's issues at that point.

Following both team's preparations, they both gathered at the ACN gala meeting for their presentations. Much to Jordan's relief, Joan -- whom Jordan had characterized as the "ace in the hole" for the competition -- arrived only hours before the performance and quickly learned her lines, while KOTU selected Black to head their presentation.

Athena presented first, with the presentation consisting of two vignettes about families using the videophone with comments and jokes by Joan peppered in between them.

KOTU followed, with their military-themed vignettes preceding a techno-themed performance by McKnight that got the audience standing on their feet and chanting its end.

"I think Brian hit it out of the park today, up their on stage pumping that crowd up," James said happily following the performance. "How can you not like that?!"

Following the presentations, both teams met with The Donald in the boardroom to hear who had won the task and which team would have one of their teammates fired.


When asked by Trump how they felt their teams had done, both project managers seemed pleased with their team's performances.

"I think we did a good job," Jordan said. "I feel like the point was made that it was important to have emotion and I feel like we did that in the presentation."

"I think we did great, really great," McKnight added.

Trump also addressed Rodman's meltdown, which Black said occurred after he had tried to "reach out with an olive branch" to the NBA star. Rodman said that he had not meant what he said, adding that he never fought with anyone in the NBA and stating that he felt he would be friends with Black following the competition regardless of what happened.

As for Rodman's lack of taking part in the presentation's planning until the very end, McKnight didn't hesitate to put the blame solely on himself as project manager, saying that the decision not to ask Rodman to rejoin them had been made by himself.

Jordan had a much tougher time dealing with her teammates over on Athena, with Melissa fuming that she was underutilized in the presentation and ignored by Jordan. Jordan shot back that Melissa was not able to take any criticism, bringing out Joan to defend her daughter.


"I've got to say, and it's not because [Melissa's] my daughter, but the weakest link in this group is Claudia," Joan said. "Claudia is a musher... She doesn't get what's important in the moment."

Jordan's boardroom session was subsequently made much worse after Trump revealed that the ACN audience had overwhelmingly voted KOTU's presentation as the better of the two, with 85% of the audience preferring it to Athena's.

"It wasn't even close," Trump said.

Amidst more arguing between Jordan and Melissa, Jordan also singled out Keeping up with the Kardashians star Khloe Kardashian as one of the team's weaker members, saying that she did not contribute enough to the presentation's planning. Despite many of her teammates suggesting that she be the one to get fired because she was the project manager, Jordan attempted to save herself by keeping Melissa and  Kardashian with her in the boardroom for Trump's final judgement.

Trump said that he understood Jordan's frustration with Melissa, but added that almost all of her teammates had stated that she had performed adequately in planning the presentation. He also criticized Jordan for putting aside business practices to single out Melissa for personal reasons instead.

"Okay listen,I'm a fan of Claudia, a lot of people are fans of Claudia, and I also feel that as a project manager that you can feel a huge burden on your shoulders... I love you, you have an amazing future, you're beautiful you're gonna be a big star, but I'm sorry Claudia you're fired," Trump said before ousting the model.


The next episode of The Celebrity Apprentice will air Sunday, March 29 at 9PM ET/PT on NBC.






About The Author: John Bracchitta