USTH: First of all, Mr. Trump, congratulations on Celebrity Apprentice being renewed for another season.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much.

USTH: Well deserved; it's a great show.

DONALD TRUMP: Thanks a lot; I appreciate it.

USTH: As you look back on this past season, how happy are you with the way it all turned out? What are your thoughts about the way the whole season developed?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know, I'm very happy with the final two. I actually took a lot of heat, fellows, I will tell you this because so many people liked Lil Jon. I have this very large Twitter account with millions of people, and I will tell you I took heat. Penn and Trace, [the people] loved Lil Jon and they were very disappointed.
Now, it also was that he happened to say something at his little interview.  He said, "Please Tweet Mr. Trump and say, 'You made a mistake,'" so maybe that had to do with it.  That could very well have had to do with it.  But a lot of people really felt very strongly about him, and I think the two guys would say he was terrific.

PENN JILLETTE: Absolutely.

DONALD TRUMP: I really like who we ended up with. I really like the season. It was a very good season. Very competitive from a lot of standpoints because there were so many [other series] – the Sunday night hours are very, very tough. You have all of the finales. You have all of the major Country Music awards, and there were so many different competitive shows, and yet we still did well. You had the Bible I guess in cable; you had [Game of Thrones]; you had everything.
I think Sunday night has become – Sunday night used to be an easy night. I think it's now maybe the most competitive night on television. And despite that we did very well. We almost always won the 10:00 hour and we're really happy about it. But I like the way the season came out.

USTH: My next question is for Penn and Trace.  Do you consider yourselves to be competitive by nature, or is this something new that came out of you while playing this game?

PENN JILLETTE: It's very new for me. I've never played sports. I've never been a game player. I've always kind of been in my own little world. And I've never really focused on any sort of competition thing. And I actually enjoyed it. Maybe I've got to start playing chess or something.

DONALD TRUMP: Get yourself into sports; you'd be great at sports. You don't play – you've never played sports? I didn't know that. Wow.

PENN JILLETTE: I've never been a sports player, no.

DONALD TRUMP: With that size you would think you'd be good.

PENN JILLETTE: I've always been a bit of a bookworm, I'm afraid.

TRACE ADKINS: I, on the other hand, am an old jock and yes, the competitiveness started at a very early age with me and it continues on today, really.  I mean, the business that I'm in, country music, is a competitive business. To be relevant in this business means to be competitive, and that's how I continue to be relevant because I continue to be competitive.

USTH: On the first interview that we did before the season began, I asked Brett Michaels and LaToya Jackson to describe their charities and why it was important to them. You both have done a little bit of that on the show already, but I feel you can never talk about your charities too much. So I'd like to give you the opportunity once again to each of you to talk about your charity. What's the name of it, and why is it important to you?

TRACE ADKINS: Okay, I will just say at this point though you watch Sunday night because they give us ample opportunity to talk a lot about our charities. They spent a lot of time interviewing us and interviewing the people that we are representing. And so Sunday night, they go into our charities in great depth. So, that will all be on there Sunday night.
But I'll just tell you quickly that the American Red Cross showed up at my office in June, 2011 when we had a house fire. Our house was a total loss, and right on the heels of the firefighters was the American Red Cross. And I was embarrassed at that time to learn that they respond to over 70,000 house fires a year in this country. I didn't know that.
I thought the Red Cross was just the huge natural disaster response team, and I was embarrassed to learn that they – somewhere in this country right now, there's a Red Cross volunteer that's helping somebody. And, I just felt like I owed them something for being at my house when I wasn't there. I was in Alaska, so I play [Celebrity Apprentice] for the American Red Cross.

PENN JILLETTE: And I play for Opportunity Village, which is now a local charity in Las Vegas.  [Penn and Teller] do a lot of stuff with charity in Vegas. The reason I chose Opportunity Village is I'm hoping that the idea will spread. It is for people with intellectual disabilities, and it is the idea of not warehousing these people or keeping them separate from us, but rather training them to have skills and [integrate] into the workplace and just not be part of an intellectual apartheid. And I'm hoping that that idea has been successful.
One of the things that's wonderful about being on Celebrity Apprentice besides the fact that it helps Penn and Teller, a bigger fact is people from all over the country have called Opportunity Village and talked about starting them in other cities. And I need to add because –Mr. Trump cannot hear this enough – that it was Elvis Presley's favorite charity. Every scarf that he would wear in Vegas and wipe his brow and kiss and throw into the audience was made by the clients in Opportunity Village.
And I will also say that they do a lot of stuff for Mr. Trump.  At some of his hotels and properties, they do some packaging for him there. So, it's a wonderful charity to move people with intellectual disabilities into the mainstream and let them be part of us and let us love them and appreciate them.

USTH: That sounds great. Finally, as you guys look back on this past season, what are the feelings that you are left with, and are you surprised about anything that you learned about yourself?

PENN JILLETTE: Yes, I'm a little surprised that I believe I'm a little less of a creep than I thought. I've always seen myself as much more of an outsider, and I think Celebrity Apprentice let me deal with people that I normally wouldn't deal with and understand that I can get along a little better with them. That meant a lot to me. Also, after talking about the charity, this seems a little crass, but as well as we were doing in Vegas before [Celebrity Apprentice], we're doing much, much better now, [it] is the biggest bump we've ever seen.

TRACE ADKINS: Wow.

USTH:  And Trace?

TRACE ADKINS: I'm not really surprised, but I have to say from day one when I showed up and I got to peruse the cast, I thought if I was going to win this thing that Penn was going to be the man I was going to have to beat. And that's why I chose him first when I was given the opportunity to choose my team. I picked him, and then I was going to pick Omarosa and use her to dispatch Penn. But Brett picked her, and I knew immediately he'd made a mistake, and she cut his throat the first week.
Anyway what have I learned about myself? That I have more patience and tolerance than I thought I did.