CBS boss Leslie Moonves were a contestant on “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump would give him the boot.
The real estate mogul — and NBC personality — used an appearance Wednesday on behalf of his NBC reality show to lay bare his feud with Moonves. Trump called him “the most highly overrated person in television.”
“If Leslie Moonves was a contestant on our show, he would have been fired by the third episode,” Trump said. “And, unlike most people, I like Les Moonves.”
CBS spokesman Chris Ender said: “The Donald is always good for a chuckle. But we’re not going to engage in such banter.”
Moonves, as chairman of the nation’s most popular television network, is one of the most powerful people in the television business.
The feud’s root, predictably, is a business deal gone bad: Trump owns the Miss Universe Organization, and he recently took the company’s three pageants, Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, to NBC after a long association with CBS — which said they were canceled because of lousy ratings.