Donald Trump was the first reality TV star-turned-president of the United States, having hosted and presided over the competition series The Apprentice from 2004 to 2015. It should be no surprise then that he has some strong ties in the industry, with Real Housewives of New Jersey icon Teresa Giudice being the most cited example.
Like many of Giudice’s relationships, however, the history between her and the former president has had its ups and downs, to say the least.
Does Teresa Giudice support Donald Trump politically?
During Trump’s first bid for the presidency in 2016, Giudice was one of the few celebrities willing to throw their hat in the ring and support the businessman. Giudice had known Trump for some time at this point, having placed fifth on season 5 of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2012.
“I think he’s amazing. I think he’ll make a great president,” Giudice told host Andy Cohen in 2016, on an episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.
In 2016 and 2019, Teresa, along with her family, appealed to the then-president of the United States to prevent the imprisonment and later deportation of her then-husband, Joe Giudice, back to Italy. Joe Giudice had been living in the U.S. since infancy, but a guilty verdict for fraud saw the businessman serve a 41-month prison sentence, which saw Teresa also serve 15 months as an accomplice to her then-husband.
It was reported by TMZ in 2018 that Teresa allegedly asked Trump to write a character reference letter for Joe back in 2016, but the request was denied. That didn’t stop Teresa and Joe from trying again after Joe’s release from prison in 2019 when he faced deportation.
“We request that our President, Donald J Trump review our petition and pardon my father to relieve him of this life sentence the courts are bestowing on him,” Teresa’s daughter, Gia Giudice, wrote in a statement on behalf of her family on their change.org petition. “yes in Italy he will no longer be incarcerated but will he ever be free if kept from his family and be able to be a productive member of society?” the family added.
Trump never publicly responded to the petition, although TMZ claims a rejection letter was quietly sent by Trump in response. As of July 2024, Joe Giudice’s deportation was successful, with the former felon now residing in the Bahamas. The couple also filed for divorce in 2020, having separated in 2019, a few months after Joe completed his prison sentence.
When asked by Andy Cohen the same year if she and Joe would seek pardons from the President, Teresa responded “He has so much on his plate, that guy”. “Even if he could maybe try to do something, I don’t know if he would get criticized. I don’t know what they would do to him.”
“Andy, with the whole immigration thing that’s going on, that he’s fighting for. I would never do that to the president,” the reality star added, in a somewhat odd conclusion about her refusal.
Teresa kept quiet about her support for Trump in the 2020 election, which may be due to her disappointment with the then-president. However, the women of Real Housewives of New Jersey — whose stars lean much more conservative than their counterparts in other Real Housewives shows, who supported Biden — kept noticeably mum on the subject of politics following the 2020 Biden-Harris election win, supposedly as a result of Bravo’s insistence. This theory is plausible, as a network with such a large LGBTQ+ community following would be an overwhelmingly liberal demographic.
As of July 2024, Teresa hasn’t offered any public support for the upcoming election, either. There’s still time yet — that is, if the two are on good terms.
Is Teresa Giudice actually friends with Donald Trump? Their relationship outside of politics is complicated
According to Ramin Setoodeh, author of Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, Trump used to speak very highly of Giudice shortly after she appeared on Celebrity Apprentice in 2012.
According to Setoodeh, Trump gushed over “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.”
However, Andy Cohen claimed in July 2024 on his SiriusXM radio show that Trump allegedly called him, furious over Teresa’s comments in a recent episode of Watch What Happens Live, where the housewife joked that the businessman was “broke”.
“Trump called me at Bravo,” Andy recalled, referring to the network WWHL airs on. “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.”
Cohen didn’t specify when Trump made the call, but it was likely after — or the moment — he and Giudice fell out. Giudice has never retracted her political support of Trump, but her distancing from the former President and his campaign seemed to occur when he failed to support Joe in his legal troubles. While this is still speculation, there is enough of a chronological timeline to suggest there could very well be bad blood between the housewife and the former president.