The ratings are down; Trump has been blaming his spinoff protégée, Martha Stewart, for the slump; and now a just-fired contestant is claiming that the editing on Trump's show is not to be believed.

Florida entrepreneur Mark Garrison - aka "Markus," whom Trump terminated during last Thursday's installment - complains that the producers used video clips out of sequence to make him look like a gibbering idiot.

"My reputation has been decimated," Garrison told me yesterday, adding that he decided to speak out after reading Timothy O'Brien's recently published exposé "Trump Nation."

In an angry E-mail to "Apprentice" staff psychologist Liza Siegel, Garrison asserted that "the intentionally libelous method of editing has resulted in the public's belief that I am an idiot...not to mention mentally ill....I do not intend to be [Mark Burnett Productions'] cannon fodder without a spirited fight."

Garrison, who has a collection of allegedly dodgy "Apprentice" video clips, claims at least two instances of tricked-up editing: In one, during a phone call from Trump, he says producers cobbled together his answers to different questions to make him sound windy and disjointed; in another, a shot of Garrison playing with a yo-yo - cut into a segment depicting a Learning Annex presentation, even though it occurred afterward - makes him look bored and disengaged.

But Trump told me: "I dealt with him a lot during the course of the show, and you see a lot of difficulty with Markus from the standpoint of talking too much. He seems like a nice guy, but, boy, he just wouldn't stop." Trump added: "I don't do the editing....My opinion is that Markus was treated accurately."

"Essentially Markus was fired for talking too much, and clearly he hasn't shut up yet," Burnett said in a statement. "I have never commented on the editing of my shows, but having seen all the footage we have of Markus, it could have been a lot worse."

At Monday night's screening of "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," the red carpet couldn't accommodate the 30-odd members of the rapper's bloated posse, which included not only his co-star Tory Kittles and G-Unit cohorts, but a fleet of publicists, hulking bodyguards and hangers-on.

Unfortunately, Fitty's anxious handlers started pushing him along before he could present everyone else, but Lowdown couldn't resist asking him: How will you know when your entourage has gotten too big?

Later at the screening, at Loews 19th St. - hosted by GQ editor Jim Nelson, who revealed that Fitty will be a GQ Man of the Year - the rap star sat next to his maternal grandmother. When a graphic, all-nude sex scene with Joy Bryant came on, Fitty leaned over and advised: "Grandma, close your eyes."

MORE MELODRAMA ON 43RD STREET: That's quite a scathing critique The New York Times Book Review is publishing this Sunday of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's latest tome, "Are Men Necessary?" Reviewer Kathryn Harrison, best known for her memoir of her sexual affair with her father, smacks Dowd's "fast-talking spins" on the sexes: "They suffer the opposite of synergy, adding up to less than the sum of their parts. ... Like most people who work hard at seeming to be naturally funny, Maureen Dowd comes across as someone who wants to be liked." And "an award-winning acid tongue just may be a tragic flaw." At least the editors didn't assign the review to Judy Miller.

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