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 On Friday, September 24, we spoke with Alex Delgado, the first member of the men's team, Octane, to be fired from The Apprentice. It was week 2 of the competition, and the teams were charged with the seemingly simple task of selling ice cream in Manhattan. When the totals were tallied, the ladies' team, Fortitude, sold $1800 worth of ice cream during the two day task, while the men sold $1500, meaning the women outsold the men's total by an additional 20%. In the boardroom, project manager, David Johnson quickly selected Alex and James Weir as the two weakest players. Alex did not defend himself as passionately as David and James did in the eyes of Donald Trump, and that led to Alex being the second candidate fired.
Here are the facts about Alex Delgado from his NBC Apprentice bio: Alex Delgado, 43 (Santa Ynez, Calif.), a charismatic family man, has a background in mechanical engineering technology and worked as an inspector/materials testing technician. Due to the recent economic recession, he was laid off and began working as a tow truck driver to make ends meet. Delgado describes himself as a man of many passions who has owned a car restoration company, overseen various million-dollar projects and played in a rock band. He prides himself on his ability to take an idea, improve upon it, and see projects through from start to finish. Delgado resides in Santa Ynez, California with his wife and two kids.
USTOWNHALL SPEAKS TO ALEX DELGADO OF THE APPRENTICE 10:
USTH: My first question is simple. Everyone in the boardroom during the final sequence of the show said that you weren't forceful enough, or that you didn't have the same passion – those were Donald Trump's words – compared to the other guys on the chopping block. When you watched the show back, did you agree with that criticism?
ALEX DELGADO: Yeah, totally. Totally. And you know, always, hindsight is twenty-twenty. The one thing that I thought of pretty much as I was going down the elevator [after being fired] was, boy, I should have actually revealed my whole hand of cards at that point. And with the stumbling of the words when I said, "I can be in their league," I should have said, "I can step down to their league" – in the aspect of Dave is basically [just] a salesman, that's all it comes down to.
James, a great guy, I love him too, but, he's [just] a lawyer. I was the 3D [multi-dimensional] candidate. I've had my own business. I know how to run a business. I went to school for mechanical engineering technology, and I side-stepped in my career is civil engineering. So, mix all of that together and that becomes more of a 3D-type candidate.
Of course, I have my musical background as well. I've got a professional – I play guitar. That kind of brings me...I've always seen myself as a step up, because I'm such a 3D candidate.
And maybe you have seen the "Man of Many Hats" that I have posted myself as, and I still firmly believe that is how you've got to get through today's economy, is make yourself versatile. And the more versatile you are, the more apt you are to get rehired.
USTH: You said that you had a full hand of cards that you did not reveal in the boardroom. What were the other cards that you did not reveal?
ALEX DELGADO: Right there with the show I should have showed Trump, I am the 3D candidate as opposed to these guys up here to be just one trick ponies. Like I said, Dave is just a salesman. James is just a lawyer. Where's the rest of your background? It's good that you went to school at Yale or something like that for your law degree. That's fine. But what more do you bring to the table? How can you top me?
So, there's my deck of cards. I [only] said that I am an engineer when Trump asked me initially from the initial boardroom where we first met him on the previous episode.
He went around the room and asked everybody and some people gave him the backstory. I just said, "Mr. Trump, I'm an engineer." That's all, short and sweet because I did not want to reveal anything [more about myself] to the other candidates.
USTH: When you were in the cab ride on the way home, you said that on this task David put you in a position to fail. How exactly do you think he did that?
ALEX DELGADO: I didn't realize that Trump was just going to try to base things on sales. The sales, technically, were not tallied. I called [David] out [the previous week]. You did not see this on the first episode. But Trump did look at me and said, "Alex, who's your weakest link?" Well, Dave caused conflict in the first episode, as everybody saw. So, another short and sweet answer to Trump, "David was our weakest link."
So, at that point, I called him out in the boardroom [as did] some of the other contestants. With him tasking James and [me] to go get supplies – we had to pick out some kind of uniforms. You saw the candy striper outfits, and hats and wig, and all of that stuff. We had to go to Staples to get the signs and supplies to make signs. We had to go to another party supply place and get the balloons.
All that takes time and with the film crew chasing us, then they have to go, "Hey, we need to film you going to these places. We need to get these places to sign releases. Now, we have to film you coming in. We need to film you coming out." That takes a lot of time. And that's valuable time that we did not spend on the streets with the rest of the guys selling.
So, in a nutshell, yeah, you can say James and I did have the lowest sales, and if that's what you are going to base everything on, that's why you fired me, well, then yeah, of course. But I stepped up to the other tasks that Dave had asked me to do and I know I succeeded in those.
USTH: At the end of the episode where you were fired, it was mentioned that you had a new job at construction management. Was that arranged through The Apprentice? If not, how did that all come about?
ALEX DELGADO: That was not arranged. NBC or The Apprentice had nothing to do with it. When I was let go from my previous job, I immediately started going to other engineering firms, and Earth Systems was the first place. I worked with the lab manager quite closely through projects and stuff that I couldn't personally test, or that I did not have the facility to test.
So, Terry [at Earth Systems] forwarded my resume to one of the managers [there]. And literally within two days during the filming, or I'd say within a week of us starting the filming, I got a phone call. I'm talking to my wife and she says, you have a phone call from Rob Downs and he wants to know if you want a job?
So, thanks to NBC's PA, they assisted me in getting in touch with Rob and basically I got hired over the phone. And so I said, "Hey, I'm on a project [contestants are not allowed to tell anyone outside of key family members that they are on The Apprentice]. Can I finish this or you need me to come home right now?" Because I would have dropped everything and come right home because, for me, that's real life. That's my family, that's my livelihood that I just spoke about. That's what's important. That's who I needed to take care of.
And fortunately Rob says, "No, when's your arrival date, on the 2nd of July?, come into the office the sixth. We're closed on the fifth," and that's basically where I signed all of my paperwork – the human relations paperwork and off I went, back to work.
USTH: Well, that's great for you. Congratulations on that. So, at least we had a little happy ending for you. Now, just to peel back the curtain on the task a bit, when you guys were given the task to sell the ice cream and both the men and women ended up at Union Square, that seemed a little coincidental.
So, I'm questioning whether you really were allowed to sell ice cream anywhere in New York City, or did The Apprentice give you, say, five areas that you could pick from or a certain number of areas that you could pick from?
ALEX DELGADO: Correct.
USTH: ...and that you both ended up there. Okay.
ALEX DELGADO: Yes. Yeah, correct. On the [task] dossier – the dossier gives you your limitations, and actually, I don't think [Donald Trump, Jr.] read it because he specifically said, "The girls are twenty yards from what was a busy place," meaning the subway exit.
We initially set up there. We arrived first. And I'll tell you, the devious part of me saw both ice cream trucks on the same street for our first delivery [of product for us to sell], and I grabbed a couple of guys and said, "We should buy the girl's ice cream and leave them high and dry," not knowing that they were going to stick us in the end [by going up to our customers and giving them free ice cream].
But, I was going to leave them high and dry and let them waste two hours trying to figure out where their ice cream is, and they've got to get another order.
But, you know, there's a nice guy in me. No, let's play fair. But we initially set up at the subway exit, and we were instructed that you have to be against the Park and that all sales must be within ten feet of the cart itself.
So, that's another part that I did not know. When we had moved to Father Demo Square [in the West Village], on the stop light, I was walking up and down the cars and I was selling to about...you know, there's eight to ten cars in this line. And I was selling to about 40 to 50% of them every stop light.
And so, I had a gang load of sales going, and they yanked me from doing that because that was not within ten feet of the cart. And Clint even tried to pull the cart into the street so we could be within ten feet.
So, I mean, I've got to give props to Clint for trying to help me as best as he could. But, like you said, there are limitations. And so, that is how we wound up initially being right next to each other. We had taken the spot first in Union Square, and then the girls wound up following us.
USTH: During the first episode, they introduced all of you, and each of you had a sort of sad backstory – hard times – but they seemed to focus a lot on David's backstory in that he had five kids. And I don't want to misquote anything or say the wrong thing, but I think he said that his wife left him because he'd lost a job or [that she left him] around that same time. And, they certainly played up David's story a lot on the show. On the other hand, he was kind of erratic as you guys pointed out. And it was sort of hot and cold with him in terms of whether the other guys liked him on a given day or not.
Do you think, though, that David's backstory gave him a certain immunity from being fired so early on in the show?
ALEX DELGADO: I believe to a certain degree yes and – but, I don't know if it's so much the backstory or the fact that he was one of the contestants that met with Donald Trump at the Santa Monica open auditions. You've heard that I did not attend those at all.
USTH: Right.
ALEX DELGADO: I attended no auditions. They picked me through the application that I sent online.
USTH: Okay. Now, let's pretend that you were the Project Manager on this ice cream task and, again, assuming that you guys lost, whom would you have brought into the boardroom and why?
ALEX DELGADO: It's possible that I would have...I would have definitely brought in Dave but I would've had to assess his performance in the aspect of [that] he was a wishy-washy Project Manager.
So, I most likely would have still brought in Dave because I called him out as an issue in the first [week], so I say that there's a 95% chance he would have still come in the boardroom with me.
The second person – I don't know that I would have brought in James, but it's hard to say. Pulling out the rest of – you know, what did Wade really do? He was kind of in the shadows this whole process. You saw him a little bit.
Gene – you kind of saw a little bit, but working with Gene on this project, I thought he was pretty strong. And, then of course, it's hard to pull out either Anand or Steuart.
I did mention that [Anand and Steuart] were a little over-handsy with people. But, you know, that's their style and like Trump says, and I think even George [Ross] says, you have to be very aggressive in New York.
And it's tough for me to get in people's faces to try to sell them something. I come from a softer side that just says. "Hey, I'll give you my spiel, and hopefully you'll like it. Come talk with me, and let me show you what we've got," as opposed to buttering up the way that Steuart and Anand did.
So it would have been a toss-up with my other one but Dave probably would have most likely come with me.
USTH: Going back now to the reality that Dave was Project Manager, do you think that maybe Donald was too lenient on him last night? And do you think maybe David should have had his feet held to the fire a little bit more, and maybe actually should have been fired instead of you – setting aside the personal issues between the two of you – just in terms of performance.
ALEX DELGADO: Yeah, [because] he was wishy-washy. He did rely on James for the location. Anand did back James because Anand is also from New York.
And as I got to know James, I really discovered he's the East Coast version of me. I know Los Angeles pretty good. I really know San Francisco. So, had we filmed out here I'd have been the go-to guy to tell you guys where to go – "Here's the hot spots" and everything.
And like I said, Anand backed him up on a lot of his recommendations. Steuart was also kind of from New York but he spends more time in D.C. So he couldn't really help that much.
Like I said, Dave is wishy-washy. He depended on everybody else before he could make a decision.
USTH: Looking at the ladies' team –I know that this was taped months ago, but if you had progressed in the competition – whom would you have been the most worried about from the ladies' team in terms of her really being a hard person to beat?
ALEX DELGADO: Definitely Stephanie. I mean, she ran that whole project [even though she was not Project Manager].
USTH: Okay.
ALEX DELGADO: Poppy [the Project Manager for the task] was kind of like Dave. She was pretty wishy-washy, you know, the way they put it all together. And being that I wasn't concentrating on what [the ladies] were doing during the filming of this, I couldn't really say for sure.
Mahsa's another strong one. And you get to see in the "Get to Know the Candidates," there is a little glimpse of me going head-to-head with Mahsa and I'm surprised it actually didn't show up in the show last night because, when it was happening, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, "Oh Lord, this is what [promos] are made out of, exactly what we are doing right here," and I did turn around, and I gave up. I'm like, "No, I'm not going to do this with you," and I walked away.
USTH: Well, what were the circumstances of that? What made you and Mahsa go head-to-head?
ALEX DELGADO: Oh, this is getting back to the manhandling. I had stopped a gentleman and started talking with him and she grabs his arm and starts trying to pull him away.
I'm like, "Hey Mahsa, back off, I'm talking to this gentleman." And we did, we kind of went head-to-head at that point, and she said, "Well, you took our spot."
And I'm like, "Wrong, we were here first yesterday. We had let you guys have the spot because we decided to go move somewhere else because we knew the pickings were better over at this other place [Father Demo Square]." So, like I said, it just escalated from there.
USTH: Even though you didn't get to be the Apprentice, the timing was right that you got something out of it. Actually, I just want to solidify that aspect of time. You said you got the call for this construction job while you were filming The Apprentice. If you had not been fired this week, would you have eventually felt as though you had to leave anyway because you said that you called them, and you asked them if you could stay and finish the [show]. But if it had really had gone on for eight more weeks, wouldn't you have felt as though you were putting that new job in jeopardy, and wouldn't you have wanted to leave anyway?
ALEX DELGADO: Yes, exactly, 100%. Granted, it would be great to win, to have won the money and everything, and the opportunity to work for Trump would have probably been great. It would have been difficult in the aspect of I own a house here in California.
But the salary would have probably allowed me to keep the house and probably keep an apartment in New York. But, then there's travel back and forth. I'm not going to pull my kids from school and move them to New York. They are going to stay here where they have all of their friends and everything.
So it would have been, definitely, a challenge had I won. So I was very fortunate with this job. And like you said, there's a good chance that I might have told [The Apprentice producers], "You know what, I need to bow out because this opportunity came up [at Earth Systems], and it's too good to pass up."
USTH: It's interesting what you said before that some of the players – I think you said Wade – had been in the background, and I did notice that last week and this week that certain players like James and David and Gene and maybe even Steuart a little bit, have been more in the cameras while other players have been in the background. I think even you weren't featured all that much the first week.
So, Is the show being edited in the proper way? In other words, are the "stars" coming to the forefront simply via the edit, or are there other stars like Wade or some of the other guys who may surprise us? Who may even, though right now they're not being focused on a lot, be stronger than the Steuarts and the Davids and the Jameses that are getting a lot of camera time?
ALEX DELGADO: The storyline is being edited, evidently, to show the most drama.
A really good example was last week. Gene initially wanted me to stay and help with the design. I told him, "Dude, I'm a home improvement dude. Let me go with – I think it was Steuart and Wade. We'll go pick out some furniture, and then we're going to go by the hardware store. I'll make a list. I'll have this place up and running paint-wise and supply-wise before you can blink your eye.
And so, finally, he said, "Go ahead. Go if you think you can pull that off." And so, the three of us went in the van but you saw none of this. Steuart and I got along really, really [well]. Even though he kind of bagged on me, I kind of had him snowed, you know, that's the way that I look at it. There was no drama.
Steuart came up with a beautiful plan: phone the hardware store ahead. I had my list right in front of me that I had made. He called up; we walked in. We couldn't have been there five minutes total from the time that we stopped the van until the time we had it loaded and everything paid for. And we were back on our way.
No drama whatsoever. We were working together like crazy. Later on, at the end of that project, Wade said, "Alex impressed me the most. He was one of the oldest contestants, and he blew all of us out of the water." Clint will tell you that I was the hardest working guy on the first [project]. But I didn't bring drama.
I put my nose to the grindstone. Wade definitely put his nose to the grindstone. And there was plenty of other guys in there that assisted me. "Hey, let's do this, and let's do that because Gene's got to take care of this and let's let him take care of that as the Project Manager."
So, I kind of felt like [Gene's] backup at that point and helped lead these guys to victory on the first week. So, to answer your question 100%, a lot of the backstory, a lot of which you would say would be the back stars – definitely not being shown.
USTH: So, in other words, the cast – among the eight guys that were there, the cast is pretty strong all around? So, we shouldn't assume that just because somebody's in the background that means that we shouldn't focus on them or that they are a weak player? They're equally as strong as the people that are getting camera time?
ALEX DELGADO: Oh, correct. Anand said it best – Gene had a hard time trying to wrangle eight alpha males [in week one], and that's for sure. You know, Clint said it really [well] in one of his interviews. He says it was the tale of two Genes. [Gene] was trying to figure out how to wrangle eight alpha males, and on [the morning of] Day 2, he laid down the law.
[Gene said], "Look, if we are going to win this, here's what's got to happen: Own your part of the project. Let's go. Do it. Shut up and do it. It is not a democracy anymore. We're not going to vote on things. This is the way that it's going to go. Do it." And he had to lay down the law, and we did it. We put our noses to the grindstone and pulled off a win.
USTH: Now, I know the show has been fully taped except for the finale, so don't reveal anything that happens on the show...
ALEX DELGADO: Correct.
USTH: And, I know some of it is sort of like a TV edit because they showed you walking out of Trump Tower wearing an overcoat, and I think you filmed it in like the Summer or something, or the Spring. I know they're showing it in September, but obviously we know that it was filmed in let's say, in March, or maybe April or May, or whatever. I'm here in New York, and I know that we weren't wearing overcoats back then. You know, that's TV for you.
But, so again, without revealing anything, when you leave the show, do the producers keep you in the loop about what happens in subsequent weeks, or do you not know any more than we know right now?
ALEX DELGADO: No. I could probably go into full detail for the remaining weeks but, like you said, I can't reveal anything. We go to what's known as a sequester house, kind of like in [the TV series] Big Brother [regarding the houseguests who become the jury].
USTH: Oh, okay.
ALEX DELGADO: It's the same type of thing. And so, I will say definitely bonding happens there. All of the gloves are off over there. It's no big deal. So, we do get to talk about a lot of stuff that happened.
USTH: Alex, thank you for your time, and good luck in the future. It sounds like you are one of the success stories. I'm glad everything has worked out for you in the end.
ALEX DELGADO: Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's all about second chances on this [season of] Apprentice, and I definitely got another one, a second chance, with Earth Systems. It's awesome.
The Apprentice airs each Thursday night at 10:00pm Eastern & Pacific / 9:00pm Central on NBC.
Use the image gallery below to read the other interviews in this series
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On Wednesday, October 6 and again on Friday, October 29, we spoke with Mahsa Saeidi-Azcuy, one of the more outspoken contestants on this season of The Apprentice. The October 6 interview was in reaction to the news that Ms. Saeidi-Azcuy had resigned from her position in the District Attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York earlier that week. On October 29, we spoke once again when she was fired by Donald Trump during the October 28 episode (which actually took place months before in real time). Mahsa was fired after her team, Fortitude, lost to the men's team, Octane, on the task of putting together a presentation for potential backers of a planned Broadway musical. However, in a twist, Mahsa wasn't actually fired because of what happened on this task. She was fired when it came out in the boardroom sequence that, in the previous week's task, she had spoken to a member of the men's team, Clint, regarding how much money her team had earned during the pedicab challenge. For her part, Mahsa insists that although she did reveal a dollar amount to Clint, he reciprocated with information about the men's team – a claim which Clint vehemently denied and was backed up on by the other contestants.
Join us Monday, October 4 for an exclusive chat with James Weir, the third contestant fired by Donald Trump from The Apprentice. The task for this episode was to manage a doggy daycare center. James was project manager for his team, Octane, and when they lost the task to the ladies' team, Fortitude, James brought his arch nemesis, David Johnson, along with Wade Hanson into the boardroom. After listening to the heated discussion, Mr. Trump decided that the men's team lost because of James' performance as Project Manager. Since leaving The Apprentice, James has landed a job with the New York Attorney General's office.
On Thursday, September 23, we spoke with the creator of NBC's new hit show, 
USTH: Regarding the series logo, one of the things that we always see is when they flash the logo on the screen the second E in "The Event" flips over backwards. Is that any sort of representation about something in the series or symbolic of something in the series – something we should sort of look at as a clue? Or is simply an artistic flourish?
On Friday, September 17, we spoke with Nicole Chiu, the first contestant fired by Donald Trump on the latest season of NBC's hit series, The Apprentice. She was team leader of the women's team, Fortitude, who lost out on the first task to the men's team, Octane. The task was to design and furnish a thoroughly modern workspace in the SoHo district of Manhattan. Here are the facts about Ms. Chiu from her NBC Apprentice bio:
