Donald Trump's latest distraction? While serving as president he'll still exec produce 'Apprentice'

PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump is the

political equivalent of one of those basketball teams which foul every possession figuring the refs can't call them all.

The news from Trump Tower or Trump Twitter spills out so quickly and outrageously that it's left his fans doing cartwheels and a flabbergasted media unable to focus on which move merely looks bad and which one really is bad.

So while pundits are yakking about the phone call to Taiwan, there's the appointment of the billionaire who hates public schools as Secretary of Education or the fast-food executive who hates unions as Secretary of Labor or the climate-science denier as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. And let's not forget the brain surgeon picked to oversee Housing and Urban Development. Interesting choices to be sure.

It seems, to Democrats at least, that the primary purpose of Trump's Cabinet appointments is to dismantle the departments they're entrusted to run.

Is it only a matter of time before pharmaceutical price-gouger Martin Shkreli is chosen to lead the Food and Drug Administration?

So when Variety.com reports that the soon-to-be president of the United States is going to retain an executive producer credit on the Comcast/NBC show The New Celebrity Apprentice, set to return Jan. 2 with new host Arnold Schwarzenegger, the outrage fatigue has no energy left to take on another. It's just a TV program. It's not like we won't have clean drinking water.

Variety says that in the show's credit sequence, Trump's name will air after that of Apprentice creator Mark Burnett and before Schwarzenegger, who is also an exec producer. Trump will be paid by MGM, the show's corporate producer, and with an extension of its eight-episode order, it is quite possible that the leader of the free world will make more money slapping his name on a cheesy reality TV show than he will from his day job.

Ironically, Variety points out, NBC cut ties to Trump and his beauty pageants in July 2015 after his assertion that many Mexican illegal immigrants were criminals and rapists.

Well, they're back in business now.

Trump has not said where his Trump change from Apprentice will go, but in 2010, when President Obama earned royalties off his book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, that money was donated to a charity supporting the children of disabled veterans.

That's according to the mainstream media.

According to "other" sources, Obama's donations were funneled to anti-American madrasas hidden in the mountains of Afghanistan.

* In other sort-of-related Trump celebrity news, VanityFair.com says Leonardo DiCaprio met with The Donald and The Ivanka Wednesday in New York to discuss the environment.

DiCaprio was not chosen to head the EPA.

* USA Today reports that Sarah Jessica Parker's SJP LBD line of little black dresses will now be made in America.

"We believe in it because it's good for us, and it's good for our customers to know why we make these decisions. And we're invested in this country."

* All those Hallmark movies have finally taken their toll on Candace Cameron Bure.

Unable to handle the bicoastal life made necessary by her acting career in the west and her talk show in the east, she's quitting The View.

Bure stars in the Fuller House remake on Netflix in addition to her frequent starring roles as a lovelorn doctor/real estate developer/matchmaker or mystery solver Aurora Teagarden in movies for the Hallmark Channel.

Bure said on Thursday's show: "I tried to be superwoman but I am going to not try anymore."

Her exit follows by two months the departure of Raven-Symone. That leaves The View with Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Paula Faris and Sara Haines as permanent co-hosts, with Jedediah Bila and Sunny Hostin as frequent contributors.

* People magazine reports that former Dan Gross classmate Kobe Bryant (at Lower Merion) is a proud papa again.

His wife Vanessa has given birth to their third daughter at an unknown Los Angeles location on an unannounced day.

She joins big sisters Gianna, 10, and Natalia, 13.

* In other daddy news, Mick Jagger's reps say the rock legend has welcomed the birth of his eighth child.

You can't always get what you want.

But if you try some times, you get what you seed.

Jagger, the 73-year-old frontman of the Rolling Stones, was on hand Thursday at a New York hospital when his 29-year-old girlfriend, Melanie Hamrick, gave birth to the couple's son. According to a statement, both parents are "delighted," and "mother and baby are doing well."

Jagger already has seven children - Georgia, James, Jade, Elizabeth, Lucas, Karis and Gabriel - who range in age from their 40s to teenagers.

He became a great-grandfather in May 2014 when Jade's daughter, Assisi, gave birth to a baby girl.

Hamrick is a ballerina who has performed with the American Ballet Theatre in New York. They began dating after the 2014 suicide of fashion designer L'Wren Scott, Jagger's partner of 13 years.

In May, fellow Rolling Stone Ron Wood became a father again at 68 after his wife, Sally Humphreys, gave birth to twin girls.

Jagger and his bandmates recently released Blue & Lonesome, the iconic rock group's first album in 11 years. They seem to be neither blue nor lonesome.

- Daily News wire services

contributed to this report.

gensleh@phillynews.com

215-854-5678 @DNTattle