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The Ambassador – the ultimate reality show for top Trumps
The Observer
|May 04, 2025
It's the sort of series finale that Mark Burnett would have tried to script for The Apprentice: two heavyweight candidates with very different styles, vying for a role as Donald Trump's top man in London.
One is Warren Stephens, the freshly minted US ambassador to the UK, a billionaire banker rewarded by Trump for being a generous donor to his 2024 presidential campaign with a top job and a Regent's Park ambassadorial mansion.
The other is Burnett himself, a working-class kid from east London and Falklands War veteran, who became the reality TV mastermind behind Survivor, The Voice, Shark Tank and The Apprentice.
Burnett, the man who made Trump a television star, is a close friend of the president and since January has been the US special envoy to the UK.
Yet Burnett's role raised a question for diplomats in the UK and US. Which of them would be Trump's guy at the Court of St James? Stephens would outrank Burnett. Yet Burnett was far closer to the president.
"There's a story that [Burnett] was in No 10 with Keir Starmer and pulled out his phone and called Donald Trump and got Trump on the phone," said Lewis Lukens, a retired diplomat. "I'm not sure Warren Stephens would be able to do that."
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