Well, it looks like Rod Blagojevich won’t be getting a letter from Hogwarts anytime soon.
When the ex-Governor became the Project Manager for the men’s team (RockSolid) during last Sunday’s Harry Potter themed task, Blago’s dismal knowledge of technology ultimately cost his team the win. With it being the third consecutive loss for RockSolid, Mr. Trump had no choice but to fire the task’s leader – Blago.
When asked what the biggest reason behind his loss was in a Tuesday interview, Blago said his downfall started years ago inside a movie theater.
“The Harry Potter world for young children is magical and it’s extremely popular,” he said. “I’m aware of it because of my two young kids. When I was governor I would take them to see those movies. I never foresaw the possibility that I’d one day be on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice and that I would be in a competition to create a Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I didn’t spend enough time concentrating on the movie.”
The celebrity apprentices’ task was to create a 3D display for Universal Studio’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction. Each team’s display would be judged by a test group of young Harry Potter fans who quickly discovered RockSolid didn’t have all their facts correct. Terminology likes “classes” instead of “houses” and “Wizardry World” instead of “Wizarding World” were both brought up in the boardroom, which Trump attributed to Blago’s lack of preparation. However, Blago said the two team members he blamed for the loss, Curtis Stone and Michael Johnson, were thinking less about the team and more about themselves.
“I didn’t see any of this going on, but in retrospect, based upon how the show shook out, there could have been a little bit of Michael and Curtis spending too much time trying to prepare themselves to shift the blame onto Bret or me to preserve their positions on the show in the event that we lost that project. So maybe there was a little of that. They were laying a foundation to pretty much cover their asses in the event that we ended up losing.”
In his closing words, Blago said that bringing Poison frontman Bret Michaels back into the boardroom and blaming him for the loss would be a betrayal, but he still had to blame Stone and Johnson. He said if he hadn’t, Trump would think he was giving up.
“If there wasn’t a charity involved and I wasn’t fighting to raise money for children – the Children’s Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida – then maybe I would have said, ‘Look I’m the project manager, I take responsibility, we lost.’ But, you know, I signed on to support my charity so I can’t quit on my charity. Therefore, I’ve got to follow the rules and bring the guys into the board room because I ain’t quitting.”
While an integral part of the task was having the Project Managers (Blago and Selita Ebanks) communicate to the rest of their teams from across the country, Blago’s inefficiencies at using e-mail and text messaging but his team further behind the women’s team. However, Blago said this was an easy excuse for other to place the blame on himself.
“And I’m not so sure that the inability to text message was at all the difference. I think that was a convenient excuse for Michael and for Curtis. When there’s the possibility your team’s going to lose, human nature kicks in and survival instinct steps up. And these guys were all about making sure they pointed fingers in another place to protect their position. I don’t think we lost because of (text messaging). I think we lost because the women just did a little bit better than we did.”
Since the show, Blago said his daughter Amy has been helping him catch up with technology.
“In fact yesterday she sent me like five texts. I was in New York and LA. She’s giving me updates on the Cubs opener. She was texting me back and forth all kinds of updates and then I would respond to her. And then my last message to her was basically, ‘You’re the coolest kid I know.’ And then she responded and said, ‘You’re weird.'”
In the previous episodes of the season, teammate Darry Strawberry accused Blago of trying too hard to say that he’s innocent in the 2008 political scandal Blago was involved in. Blago, however, said he has no choice but to announce his innocence.
“There’s so much at stake here from a personal level that I can’t help but keep saying to everybody and anybody who might be willing to listen, ‘It simply is not true, what they said about me, and I want you to know it’s not true and I’ll prove it to you.’ So I get what Darryl’s saying, but the reality is I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m fighting back. And I don’t know what am I supposed to do? You know, say I did these things when I didn’t? I didn’t.”
As the show continues with the remaining 10 celebrities, Blago said he doesn’t know what exactly will happen but to expect some fireworks in the future, especially in the men’s team.
“I think that’s it’s going to get nastier as it unfolds because I saw signs of that developing already. You’re going to start seeing a lot of the back and forth backstabbing positioning and the kind of cutthroat thing that kicks in when people want to survive and they want to win at all costs. I believe next weeks show – and I don’t know this but I’m just speculating – is going to be the beginning of the end of the era of good feelings and the beginning of the night of the long knives.”
