Donald Trump Once Considered Setting 'Blacks Against Whites' On 'The Apprentice'

President Donald Trump once said he could gain stellar television ratings by pitting black contestants against white ones for a season of his reality TV show, “The Apprentice .”

In a 2005 radio interview on “The Howard Stern Show,”  Trump claimed “some person” had proposed the concept of “nine blacks against nine whites .” CNN aired resurfaced audio of the interview on Wednesday.

“And it would be nine blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, strong, beautiful people, right?” Trump told host Stern.

Stern asked whether “very dark blacks or light-skinned blacks” would appear. Trump said there would be an “assortment.” The whites, Trump continued, would probably all be blondes.

Stern and his co-host, Robin Quivers , suggested Trump could provoke “a riot” and a “racial war” with the idea.

But Trump shot down their fears. “I don’t think, see, actually, I don’t think it would. I think that it would be handled very beautifully by me,” he said, boasting it would be “the highest-rated show on television.”

Rumors that a tape exists of Trump using the N-word during his time on the NBC reality show set have circulated since before his 2016 election victory.

Former White House Omarosa Manigault Newman reignited those reports this week, but Trump has denied the claim writing on Twitter that “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary .” 

Check out the clip above.