Tom Arnold and Mark Burnett get in a physical altercation ahead of 'The Hunt for the Trump Tapes' premiere

Suzy Byrne
·Editor, Yahoo Entertainment
0
Tom Arnold and Mark Burnett were involved in a fight on Sunday — and Burnett’s wife, Roma Downey, claims she was injured. (Photos: Getty Images)
Tom Arnold and Mark Burnett were involved in a fight on Sunday — and Burnett’s wife, Roma Downey, claims she was injured. (Photos: Getty Images)

Tom Arnold’s The Hunt for the Trump Tapes has landed him in a physical fight with The Apprentice creator and Donald Trump star maker Mark Burnett, as well as Burnett’s wife, Touched by an Angel’s Roma Downey.

With the show — which sees Arnold trying to track down the rumored, potentially damaging recordings of the president — debuting on Viceland Tuesday, tensions were apparently high between the two men, leading to Burnett going “apes***” and trying to choke Arnold at a pre-Emmy party on Sunday. Well, that’s Arnold’s side of things.

Downey had a different version of events. She said that Arnold “tried to ambush my husband Mark and me at a charity event.” It led her to ask: “Is your TV show worth it Tom?!”

Neither side is backing down. Arnold said he would be reporting the fight to police — and contemplating legal action.

Soon after, he tweeted — at the president himself — that he was at the West Los Angeles Police Department filing charges against Burnett, “who lost his mind.”

A spokesperson for the LAPD confirmed to Yahoo Entertainment on Monday that Arnold “did make a battery report at West LA Station this morning.”

Arnold also wrote that Kevin Bacon watched the whole thing go down, alongside his daughter, Sosie — because, of course, the subject of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game was at the party.

Arnold also went on to assert that film director Bryan Fogel witnessed it all — and had his phone knocked out of his hand by Downey during the fracas.

Meanwhile, Downey is thanking her fans for their prayers.

So the obvious question is … why? It’s long been said that while making The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, the then star of the show — and our current president — used racial slurs and other derogatory comments that were captured on tape. Omarosa Manigault Newman is the most recent to say it (it’s covered in her book), but she wasn’t the first. Penn Jillette has said the tape exists because he was in the room with Trump when Trump said racist and sexist things on the show in 2012. Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt has claimed that previous seasons of the reality show had even more damaging behavior. Burnett sold the show — and rights to the footage — to MGM and said they’d never open the archives because the tapes are contractually confidential. Burnett later said during the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour in August 2018 that there are no tapes of Trump making racist or sexist comments and Trump recently tweeted the same.

This brings us to Arnold’s show. In 2016, after the election, Arnold claimed in an interview on a Seattle radio program that he had had Apprentice outtakes featuring Trump saying “every dirty, every offensive, racist thing ever.” He claimed “hundreds” of people had seen the footage because years earlier it was sent out by producers of the show as a gag Christmas video. However, he said that the footage hadn’t been released because the people were worried they’d be sued because of a confidentiality agreement. At the TCA press tour in July 2018, Arnold said he’s “on a mission” to uncover the tapes “until that guy resigns and the world is a little safer, and it is going to happen.”

And Arnold’s been trying to get Burnett on the record for his show. In fact, the premiere — on Tuesday — is the “Mark Burnett/Apprentice” episode, Arnold tweeted.

In the wake of the fight, Arnold also tweeted a video of a phone call he made to Burnett — to try to set up a meeting — while making the show.

So that’s where we are — in a holding pattern until the show airs Tuesday night.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Advertisement

Recommended Stories