‘ Trump Tapes’ makes headlines but reveals little

The most obvious question raised by the title of Tom Arnold’s “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes” is: Which (alleged) tapes?

Outtakes from “The Apprentice”? Recordings from the Miss Universe pageant? Surveillance footage captured in a Moscow hotel room, in Trump Tower or elsewhere?

The eight-episode series, which began last Tuesday and continues tonight on Viceland, answers the question this way: any of them — and none.

Full of sound and fury but yielding few receipts, the series seems most concerned with the tape in Arnold’s own camera, the one that will get him back on television.

Arnold, the former husband of Roseanne Barr, took on the freelance gig after Donald Trump’s election. He’s like a mosquito buzzing around the president’s head, insisting in interviews and tweets that horrifying recordings exist detailing Trump’s private behavior.

The logic behind “Hunt” is that video brought Trump into the White House and video will take him out of it.

At a party two days before the show’s premiere, Arnold reportedly scuffled with “Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett, whom Arnold contends is covering for Trump.

But Arnold has produced more publicity than results. To call “Hunt” a “nothing burger” is inadequate. So far, it’s more of a “nothing buffet.”

Much of the first episode was devoted to a “search” for Trump’s radio interviews with Howard Stern; Arnold provides a link to a website containing the audio. But those interviews were sought and found long before “Hunt”: Offensive • "The Hunt for the Trump Tapes" is shown at 10:30 p.m. Tuesdays on Viceland.

excerpts were reported during the campaign and referenced during the debates.

There’s more, and less, in Episode 2 — in which Arnold gets former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant Penn Jillette to make accusations about Trump’s language — “homophobic, racist, misogynistic things” — but Arnold doesn’t follow up to elicit details.

He stages a dramatic reading of similar claims from “Apprentice” crew members. He resurrects a story of Trump calling the rapper Lil Jon an “Uncle Tom” that came out in 2016.

Arnold recognizes the absurdity of his playing Bob Woodward — a minor celebrity investigating a minorcelebritocrat — and “Hunt” is at least half a comedy, sending up its star’s manic obsession and D-list status.

Arnold has a sense of humor about himself. After a while, though, the show plays like a joke on the audience.

At one point, Jillette describes Arnold as shameless, and Arnold gamely agrees. In his defense, some of Trump’s most effective antagonists, including Stormy Daniels, have a knack for the outrageous.

The belief in the totemic power of tapes is key to the resistancecommerce angle that Arnold is working — the fervent hope that some irrefutable artifact will, at last, be uncovered that brings down Trump as swiftly as dropping the One Ring into Mount Doom.

The alternative, Arnold says, is “sitting around until the 2020 election for this clown to get voted out.”