Donald Trump has never been one to let any perceived slight go, no matter how insignificant. That’s why when Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice called the former president “broke” on Watch What Happens Live, host Andy Cohen received an irate phone call.
Don’t call him “broke”
On the July 9 episode of the Andy Cohen Live podcast, Andy shared about some of the run-ins he’s had with #45 over the years.
“I’m just remembering when Teresa called Trump ‘broke’ on Watch What Happens Live, and he called me at Bravo,” Andy recalled. “I remember his assistant putting the call through … He was furious at [Teresa]. And he was like, ‘You need to do a retraction!’ It was a whole thing.”
“Somehow I said, ‘Listen, you need to talk to Teresa about this,’” he responded. As best he remembers, Andy thinks Teresa “wound up posting a retraction or something.”
“But I remember him calling. He was really pissed,” the host continued. “He was very, at the time, sensitive about people saying he was broke. That was a huge thing for him.” It still is.
Despite the incident, when Trump spoke to author Ramin Setoodeh for his book Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, Trump had nothing but glowing words to say about Teresa. Teresa competed on Celebrity Apprentice in 2012.
“He was talking about Teresa being on Celebrity Apprentice,” Setoodeh said. Trump gushed about “how great she was and how he helped her find the charity that she did for children that suffered from kidney issues and how much money she raised.”
Apparently, Teresa still considered Trump a friend since she reached out to him in 2016 on behalf of her now ex-husband, Joe Giudice. A judge had sentenced Joe to be deported to Italy after he finished his prison sentence in March 2019. Teresa hoped a letter from the then-GOP presidential candidate would sway the judge in Joe’s case, but nothing came of it.
Andy shares positive Trump memories
In spite of the dust-up, Andy offered some positive memories of Trump. He said he was “very funny” during an interview Andy did at a “big TV convention” in Vegas years ago.
“I had met him a couple of times,” the father of two said. “I had never interviewed him. He never came on Watch What Happens Live … It was a very funny interview because he was putting on a big show. So I think that was his genre.”
The Housewives executive producer has also hosted “two beauty pageants” for Trump in past years before the candidate “turned on him.” Now, Andy fears the GOP nominee will target him if he wins the election in November.
“If he gets elected, I’m gonna stop talking about him because he keeps an enemies list,” Andy commented. “I would [probably] be audited in the first year.”
