Opinion: Dear television network: Have I got an idea for you. Signed, Donald

Dear ABC:

I’ve got a great idea. Everybody I’ve talked to says it’s a great idea. The best. It’ll be huge.

I’m gonna be the Republican candidate for president, and I’m gonna win because I’m a winner. Everybody loves me. So I’m gonna need a vice president. It’s gotta be somebody good, somebody the country can respect and who knows how government works. I know the business world so I need someone who can work with Congress and the bureaucrats and get stuff done.

So how do you pick someone like that? I asked Dr. Ben Carson – great guy, great doctor, the best, everyone says so – to help with that, you know, find names of people and make suggestions. And that’s good, he’ll do a great job, let me tell you, and believe me, it’s gonna be a great list of names. Not like that choke artist Mitt Romney and his binder full of women. What a loser. Failed candidate. He was begging for my endorsement. Sad!

But anyway, once Dr. Carson gets me some names, I’m gonna need a way to figure out who I should pick. It hit me on Cinco de Mayo while I was eating a taco bowl from the Trump Tower Grill – the best taco bowl, I tell you. I love Hispanics! And they love me! – how I should do it. It’s a great idea. The best I’ve had, and we can make a bundle from it, very successful, very profitable, let me tell you, I’ve had the best minds look at it and they say it’s the best they’ve seen, bar none.

Let’s pick a running mate through a reality TV show. I mean, what’s a vice president if not an apprentice, am I right? But I don’t want to do that show again. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnie, great guy, good friend of mine, is doing it now and he needs to stay busy so I wouldn’t want to do “The White House Apprentice.”

But we could do something else, like put all the contenders on “Trump Island” – the merchandise will be great, let me tell you, everyone will want the hats – and have them argue over which of my ideas are the best, which will be fun because they’re all great ideas, the best, everyone says so – and let the viewers vote each week on who gets booted from the island until we have a winner. It’ll be huge.

Or we can lock them all in a suite at Trump Tower with the cameras going all the time like “Big Brother,” and then I can evict one each week – I’ve got a lot of experience at that, the best experience, everyone says so – until we have a winner. We can call it “the Trump Boot” and then sell red boots with my name on them. People will love ‘em. We’ll sell lots of boots. Except to little Marco. We won’t sell any boots to him. So bitter. Sad.

Or we can have them all start in Los Angeles in teams of two and give them little maps and clues and the first team to follow them to Trump Tower in Manhattan – the best place to live in the city, everybody says so – will be the finalists, and then they can play a round of golf at my Trump National Course in Westchester County – it would be perfect, just a few miles from Lying Hillary’s house in Chappaqua – and whoever wins will be the vice president. We can call it “The A-MAZ-ing Race: Par for Trump” and sell little golf tees and towels and stuff with my name on them. The golfers will love them, let me tell you. I play golf and I know how golfers think. It’ll be huge.

I was thinking we could try an “American Idol” kind of show but then I heard Carly sing and, well, we do want to win this thing, am I right? So no, we won’t do that. Or “Dancing With the Veeps.” I don’t know if any of these folks will be able to dance, and it would be just pathetic to watch a bunch of people stumbling around. But we could do something like “The Bachelor” and I’ll go on dates with each of them and then they can talk separately on camera about how much they love me and in the end I’ll make the pick by giving one of them a single rose with the name Trump stamped on each petal. It’ll be great, the best.

So what do you say? Are you in? It’s a great deal, let me tell you, the best. Whichever show we do, everyone will watch and will think, ABC, you’re smart, you saw how to make money from this. Much better than those phonies at NBC. And it’ll be huge, let me tell you, the biggest. Bigger than “The Biggest Loser.”

Get back to me.

Yours,

Donald

Follow Scott Martelle on Twitter @smartelle.