And that's saying a lot.

Trump is no stranger to bankruptcy. Tuesday's expected Chapter 11 filing will be the third time the casino group — just that one Trump division, among several — has gone bankrupt. But this time is especially humiliating because this is the same company that went bankrupt in November 2004, in the midst of the fourth season of The Apprentice, the reality show in which Trump "fires" people who don't meet his business standards of constant failure and mammoth debt accumulation.

It is also the same company that was purportedly turned around by the besuited loudmouth and his partners by 2005, near the height of the Apprentice juggernaut, when it victoriously emerged from bankruptcy, for the second time.

Then late last year the company put off paying interest on its bonds, and earlier this year missed a $53 million payment, according to the Journal. Trump claims he wants to fix everything and offered to buy the company, but the bondholders are expected to seek involuntary bankruptcy, so he and Ivanka resigned the board.

In response to the bankruptcy, fellow upward failer and NBC entertainment bigwig Ben Silverman, who did a "tremendous job" by signing Trump for a second Celebrity Apprentice season, is expected to go skiing, then ask Jay Leno to move his show to 9 pm.

NBC is staying mum about the new season of 'The Apprentice,' but Hollyscoop.com has learned exclusively that 'Girls Gone Wild' creator Joe Francis has been added to the lineup.

"I’m doing celebrity apprentice," Francis told Hollyscoop backstage at the Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew.

Earlier this week Donald Trump told Ryan Seacrest that he's been getting calls from stars that want to revive their career. So far it's rumored that Khloe Kardashian, Joan and Melissa Rivers, and Dennis Rodman are going to join Donald's hit show.

Can Francis hope to out-lech last season's contestant Gene Simmons, or will a jailhouse conversion have made him the next Stephen Baldwin? One thing's for sure: we can't wait to see Francis flash those baby teeth at Joan Rivers and Kim Kardashian, convincing them to romp together on a leather couch in a sapphic matchup that's most assuredly of legal age.

• Joe Francis To Join Celebrity Apprentice [Hollyscoop]

• Donald Trump Has To Hire People To Be Impressed With Him [Videogum]

· Grateful that NBC is bringing back their The Apprentice for another marginally rated, but still lucrative, season, Donald Trump and producer Mark Burnett are giving the network a cut of the product-whoring fees derived from the show's many brand-promoting challenges. [THR]
· Edward Norton will play identical twins ("one an Ivy League classics professo rand the other a hedonistic pot-smoking career criminal," naturally) in Tim Blake Nelson's comedy thriller Leaves of Grass. [Variety]

"No, I never offered Rosie a chance to be on 'Celebrity Apprentice, '" Trump told Access Hollywood in an exclusive interview.

"It's a good idea," he continued, "because I would fire her fat a**. She would definitely not last more than one show . . . I would love to fire Rose, but I don't want her on the show."

Mulling the idea over for a moment, the redness in Trump's flushed face began to fade, and he absently twirled a lock of his magnificent head of hair as he continued, "You know what, though? Firing her...mmm...that could work. Like, really work. It's crazy to say it, right? But, but...I could bend her over the boardroom's table, grab the new dismissal paddle we'll be using this season, and really go to Trumptown on that ample bottom of hers. Ammm-ple. Just lingers on the tongue, ample. Weird. You think she'd like that? She probably would. She's sick. A sick little piggy. And then right when she thinks I'm going to fire her, you know what? I stop! I bring her back for another show. Take that, Rosie. Fatfatfat. The paddling won't be so fun the second time, I promise you that. Or the third."

• Donald Trump On Rosie: 'I Would Fire Her Fat A**' [AH]M
• Previously: Basking In Feud Afterglow, Trump Tries To Leave $2 Mil On Rosie's Dresser [Defamer]

The offer, I'm told, came through producer Mark Burnett's office.

Needless to say, O'Donnell turned Trump down flat.

"I wouldn't do it for $200 million," Rosie was said to have responded.

Trump, naturally, denies making the offer, probably to save face; we suspect that all his obsessive talk of what Kelli Carpenter sees in Rosie's besnouted mug and fleshy embrace lit a curious inferno in Trump's loins, now cruelly doused by Ro's latest cold rejection. But buck up, Don — it's for the best. Sure, she got people watching that moribund morning chatfest again, but we can't remember the last time anything good came from espousing the mantra, "What's good enough for The View is good enough for me."

• Donald Trump Offered Rosie $2 Million To Go On 'The Apprentice' [FOXNews.com]

After speaking with many people in my life and reflecting on my own experiences, I've found that bosses come in many shapes and sizes. Let's categorize some of them:

• The weak, indecisive and insecure. He (or she) is afraid to make a decision and yet criticizes your decisions when you're not in the room.
• Those who manage by fear, as opposed to motivation. He gains his power and authority through intimidation.
• Those who know how to reduce you to a trembling mass of low self-esteem. In his presence he can make you feel tongue-tied and inarticulate. He carefully and strategically didarm you with a subtle put-down.
• Those who make a point of keeping tabs on everyone and everything. He forms alliances with people he can manipulate. His greatest skill is cutting you off from any ally who might be able to resist him, even from your ultimate superior, to whom he's terrified you'll rat him out.
• The micromanager and egomaniac. They need to control everything and take credit. They are quick to point the finger when something fails.

In my experience, difficult bosses frequently mix and match their abusive styles according to the opportunity and situation. Ah yes. "In my experience," indeed.

Capping a round of unparalleled media saturation that began with his Miss USA pardon, then quickly segued into his well-documented musings on Rosie O'Donnell's unbecoming height-weight ratio, the underwhelming premiere of Apprentice: L.A., and his conspicuous, NBC-underwritten presence at last night's Golden Globes, comes the cherry on top of Donald Trump's overexposure sundae: a star on the Walk of Fame.

"It really has been a special moment in my life," Trump said in a live TV broadcast of the event on sunsplashed Hollywood Boulevard. [...]

Trump's baby son, Barron, almost managed to steal the show as his dad held him at the podium.

"He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent — all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur, and most importantly, hopefully he's smart because smart is really the ingredient," Trump said.

Trump then handed his Pit Baby back to his Slovenian succubus bride, and proceeded to whip away the tarp hiding a scale model of his plans for his newly acquired real estate. The 45-story Trump Star Tower will unquestionably be the greatest, most outstanding high-rise L.A. has ever seen, making up for in verticality what it lacks in square footage (slightly less than four per floor), with spectacular city views of the Hollywood Basin and a rooftop deck floored with the original star, and characteristically featuring Trump's name in gold letters polished to a gleaming sheen.

[Photo: Getty Images]

• Donald Trump gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame [USAToday/AP]

• The Apprentice 6 Tour Bus Challenge [YouTube via FBLA]

"It's the way I look. He can't resist. I love when people say you're fat like you don't know," O'Donnell joked Monday on ABC's "The View." "... It's always the first comment of someone who disagrees with you if you happen to be on the plus side." [...]

"The guy, he's obsessed with me, obviously," she said. [...]

O'Donnell said she went shopping recently and "all of these plus-size women" with "tears in their eyes" approached her with words of support.

"He wounded millions of women by saying that I was fat, you know?"

O'Donnell also described how Trump calling her a "fat pig" has upset her young children, who have expressed concern that a man with a "dump truck" (not a Heathers-inspired fat lesbian insult, but a 7-year-old's misinterpretation of the name Donald Trump) was going "take all [Rosie's] money away." Donald, meanwhile, has already managed to issue his swat back, downplaying the "fat pig" comment as a mere sliver of the larger Rosie-insult pie, and taking a shot at O'Donnell-defender Barbara Walters while he was at it. From an Extra press release:

"Rosie, as usual, is misquoting me. I used the word "slob", I used the word "degenerate" and I used the words "not very smart." The word "fat" played a very small role, if any, in my description of her."

In reaction to Barbara Walters saying that Trump is lying about remarks she made during a phone conversation they had last week, Trump responds, "Barbara lied, as she knows very well. She will have to live with herself. She admits to phoning me. Isn't it obvious to everybody that if she phoned me, she had to be saying what I've stated, not what she claims to have said. This reminds me very much of the Star Jones fiasco and Barbara's supposed statements about her."

Actually, that's not so obvious to us. What is obvious, however, is that no one has ever attacked Queen Ant Barbara Walters without quickly finding her razor-sharp mandibles buried deep inside them and sucking out their nourishing life fluids moments before tossing the empty husks aside. With the ratings for last night's Apprentice premiere down significantly from even last season's all-time series low (could Mark Burnett have somehow miscalculated the public's appetite for watching hot chicks in hiked skirt suits getting wet n' sudsy at a WeHo car wash?), and Trump finding himself named a co-defendant in a 49-year-old rejected Apprentice applicant's motion calling for all other potential victims of the series' alleged ageist casting practices to join him in a class-action lawsuit, it would appear as if O'Donnell has won this round. Or, as she might put it, "Ching chong. Donald Trump. Ching chong ching chong chong, bite me. Ching chong."

• ICYMI: Rosie O'Donnell Responds to Trump, Gets Perm [BWE]
• Rosie O'Donnell: Trump Is 'Obsessed With Me' [Fox/AP]
• Rosie Discusses Kids' Reaction to Trump Slam [People]
• Donald Trump Sued for Age Discrimination [People]
• [ExtraTV]

· Tonight on ET and The Insider: Discover the context for the quotes that have been amusingly edited together to make James Brown's widow sound like a lunatic!
· Tonight on Ken Levine's Lost House 24: "6 pm - 7 pm: Kate gets caught in another hanging net. Locke shoots Boone. House correctly diagnoses a gunshot wound... but only after removing Boone's liver. Jack learns that Claire is really his daughter. Ten minutes later she's of course kidnapped."
Chud.com calls out Variety for the paper's uncredited discovery of box office smash Zyzzx Road.
Fishbowl L.A.'s Kate Coe interest in how the LAT underplayed the story of a Halloween hate crime in Long Beach spills over into the L.A. Weekly, and then back onto Fishbowl.
· NBC.com is streaming the first 20 minutes of the new, L.A.-based season of The Apprentice; note that The Donald's infamous combover (the greatest combover in the world!) cannot be stirred even by driving in a convertible with the top down. Impressive.

Eye has greenlit production on approximately 13 episodes of the untitled project, which begins casting shortly with an eye on a summer 2007 premiere. Details of the project are being kept under wraps.

What is known is that the action in the skein will take place on both land and at sea, suggesting the presence of ships and islands as central characters in the unscripted drama.

It's also expected the skein will incorporate traditional reality elements such as competitions and elimination ceremonies. (Perhaps losers will have to walk the plank?)

Not yet addressed are the details of the casting process, so it remains to be seen if Burnett will attempt another controversial and headline-grabbing gimmick in the vein of the quickly abandoned racial segregation of teams on this season of Survivor. Burnett is nothing if not a consummate showman, however, with an acute sense of how to best lure eyeballs to TV screens, so we wouldn't be a bit surprised if he divvied up his latest contestants into Team Hook-Hand and Team Peg-Leg, then justified the insensitive feat of handicapped exploitation by describing it as a social experiment intended to see which amputee groups fared best when removed from society and denied modern prosthetics.

• Pirates pegged for CBS [Variety]

(Bonus for NBC: We suspect Ice-T would be happy to help make this an Apprentice-SVU crossover.)

Next 'Apprentice' to Be Shot in Calif. [AP via Yahoo]
Related: Lowdown [NYDN]