The TV That Created Donald Trump

Rewatching “The Apprentice,” the show that made his Presidency possible.

By Emily Nussbaum
The New Yorker, 24 July 2017

Excerpt...

As it happens, most episodes of Trump on “The Apprentice” are curiously hard to find: they’re not available to stream or download. Only first-season DVDs are for sale, legally, online—and only used ones. The show is not at the Paley Center for Media’s research library, either. (M-G-M, which owns the rights, declined to comment.) To watch, you’ll need occult methods. But at the Paley you can catch something nearly as illuminating: a video of a panel discussion about the show, from 2004, following its first season. It was filmed the day after “The Apprentice” lost the Emmy for best reality show to “The Amazing Race.” The moderator is the “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, who, a year later, played Trump’s wingman in the pussy-grabbing tape.

Trump, in a dark suit, leans forward in his chair, hands clasped. Mark Burnett, wearing jeans and a shell necklace, lounges next to him. Both are aglow. A year earlier, NBC, whose TV programming was then run by Jeff Zucker, had been in free fall, with the hit sitcom “Friends” about to end and nothing to replace it. Burnett and Trump had provided Zucker with a hat trick: the network’s first strong reality franchise; a solution for its Must-See TV Thursday slot; and a lure for ads from corporations like Pepsi and Microsoft.

Bush asks surprisingly tough questions: he wonders whether Burnett softened Trump with an image “makeover”; he talks about whether reality television is a fad, and whether it’s cruel; and he asks what it felt like to lose the Emmy. As the drip of praise slows, Trump shows flashes of sourness, griping about old enemies, like the host of “The View”—“this fat slob Joy Behar who can’t stand me.”

Burnett never wavers. A brilliant entrepreneur, and one of the most powerful men in television, he had produced “Survivor,” on CBS, which exploded the economics and aesthetics of television, launching a transformative new genre. “The Apprentice” was the savvy workplace variation that he pitched to Trump in 2002. And yet Burnett presents himself, whether humbly or cannily, as Trump’s acolyte: Robin to Trump’s Batman, he insists.

Then he casts Trump in a fresh light, years before the 2016 campaign. Trump, Burnett explains, struck him as “a real American maverick tycoon.” Donald “will say whatever he wants.” He “takes no prisoners. If you’re Donald’s friend, he’ll defend you all day long. If you’re not, he’s going to kill you. And that’s very American. He’s like the guys who built the West. America is the one country that supports the entire world—because of guys like Donald, who create jobs and a tax base that can support the entire planet.” That’s what “The Apprentice” means to him, the producer concludes, with a grin: it’s “a love letter from me to America, and to New York City, because we chose New York City, about what makes America great.”

In a 1981 segment of “Rona Barrett Looks at Today’s Super Rich,” the gossip columnist asks the thirty-four-year-old Trump if he’d consider a run for President. Trump laments that television has ruined politics, to the extent that Abraham Lincoln could no longer get elected: “He was not a handsome man and he did not smile at all.” He skirts questions about his political pull, his controversial tax abatements. With his cold eyes, baby cheeks, and rosebud mouth, he resembles James Spader—silky and guarded, a Master of the Universe in a boxy brown suit.

Continues...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/31/the-tv-that-created-donald-trump

Rec

I imagine the Generals and Admirals and Sergeants of Senior enlisted in the audience were sticking pins in their legs to stay awake.

MAGA, of course, would have applauded him! Oh, how the ladies would have cried in ecstasy! But the Generals and Admirals and Master Sgts and Master Chiefs of the military could only have been bored and disappointed by the saggy old man, rambling on like a dazed homeless old guy being booked in a police station for vagrancy.

various medical issues. He really does look sleepy and out it, like he's wondering where the hell am I and why are all these people here?

I can't help but wonder how much we all paid to gather that audience of Generals and Admirals for this. What would be the equivalent cost to bring that many prominent civilians together from every corner of the globe, the air fare, hotel and city travel costs, meals at good if not top-flight resaturants, security. A cool million? More?

before turning the TV off. Turned it back on later and watched Trump speak a couple of groups of words and then turned MSNBC off.
Dementia Donny was showing off his disease.

what an azzwhole! if this speech is directed at the generals they can see through this s1it.

i suspect it has a wider audience on mind. or maybe just "daddy"

hegseth and the general, mostly hegseth for the 1st hour. hegseth has watched too many movies.

jesus the marine band is great but enough already!

trump starts 1 hour 20 min in

"central casting" trump of HIS generals

"Gulf of america" i know that impresses the warrior ethos on these guys.

off topic

gaza deal is straight from revelations, one temple coming up. if that stops the killing i;m ok.

if anybody is shooting at firemen on ladders stop. immediately. if it ain't happening wtf is the azzwhole talking about.

swear undying fealty and get a gold leaf commission with mt genuine signature{

It wouldn’t surprise me if the marine band was used to cover for the deafening silence that greeted the end of his outrageous, treasonous display of cellular level insecurity.

if any flag officers were on the fence i'm sure they now have whatever they needed to decide.

I found myself hoping that having them all in the same room at the same time would create a spark in their collective energy field.

video the whole thing and have the same kompromat on the generals that he has on the senators.

i've been getting red wedding vibes for a while