'Only One Thing That Matters': Former President Donald Trump Claims 'You Can Be Evil' as Long as You Get Good Ratings

Former President Donald Trump said “it doesn’t matter” if a person is the “most horrible human being” as long as they get good ratings.

Author Ramin Setoodeh, the author of the new post-presidency biography about the ex-prez titled Apprentice in Wonderland, has sent a flurry of recorded conversations he had with Trump to various outlets in recent weeks.

Last month, the author revealed that Trump told him ratings were his "whole life."

During Tuesday’s Deadline: White House on MSNBC, Nicolle Wallace aired the audio to her viewers. In the clip, Trump claimed, "If I went back to NBC right now to do something, they would do anything I wanted to do, showbiz-wise, that's what I’m talking about."

"One thing I know about that business, and I learned more about that business than anybody else could learn in a short period of time, it’s about one thing: ratings," Trump told Setoodeh. "If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world. There’s only one thing that matters: ratings."

"You can be nice, or you can be mean. You can be evil. You can be horrible. You can be crude or elegant. There’s only one thing that matters, and that’s ratings," he reiterated. "If you don’t have ratings, it doesn’t matter."

In his book, Setoodeh revealed that while visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the former president would frequently refer back to 20-year-old Nielsen ratings for the first season finale of his hit NBC show, The Apprentice.

“Trump is looking at a page from the Nielsen ratings published in a 2004 issue of Variety… from the week after the airing of The Apprentice’s first-season finale,” Setoodeh wrote. “It’s framed and bolted to the wall… something that seems to carry as much value to him as the U.S. Constitution, if not more… This sheet of paper comes from an America where The Apprentice was, if only for a single week, the No. 1 show… ‘This is my whole life,’ Trump says.”

Setoodeh told MSNBC how little Trump actually cares about governing and clarified that he’s "only interested in show business."

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As OK! previously reported, NBC allegedly tried to discourage Trump from running for president.

Before the New York businessman launched his initial presidential run in 2016, NBC executives reportedly tried to talk him out of jumping into the race.

"Steve Burke came up to see me with Paul Telegdy, and essentially said the same thing, 'We’ll give you anything you want,'" Trump said, per the book. "I said, 'Steve, I just don’t want to do it. I’ve done it enough. I’ve done 14 seasons in 12 years. I don’t need the money. I want to do other things.'"