Reality meets reality TV
The Trump Era began when the future president descended into Trump Tower’s lobby on June 16, 2015, aboard an escalator. He launched his campaign there with a speech in which he promised, among other things, to build a “great, great wall on our southern border.”
Trump also campaigned on a promise of avoiding military entanglements overseas. To that end, he said last week that he’d pull U.S. troops out of Syria “very soon.” That statement reportedly surprised his White House staff as well as seasoned military advisers like Defense Secretary James Mattis. On Tuesday, after huddling with Mattis and others, Trump agreed not to pull out troops until Islamic State is “defeated” (however that may end up being defined).
Trump’s 2015 speech also gave him an opportunity to slag China, which he described back then as an even “bigger problem” than Islamic State. “When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? They kill us,” Trump said. “I’ll bring back our jobs, and I’ll bring back our money.”
Yep, that promise is still alive and well, too. Trump stirred up a nascent trade war between the U.S. and China this week, sending financial markets into a series of tailspins and recoveries.
All three of these moments—the wall, Syria, and tariffs—reveal Trump as the circus acrobat he’s always been, captured in mid-flight this week as he tries to swing safely from one policy trapeze to another.
The president is used to being a performance artist, and he relishes the role. His entire presidential campaign resembled the reality TV performances that helped salvage his faltering business career, and the historic turnover of his White House personnel echoes his signature TV line: “You’re fired.”
But the transition from reality TV to presidential reality is tricky for Trump because he never acquaints himself with the substance of policy issues he’d have to master if he really wanted to deliver on the grandiose, divisive promises that fueled his campaign.
Trump first leapt into the public eye decades ago on the back of what he called “truthful hyperbole,” his willingness to dissemble about his business accomplishments to get good press. Playing that game instead of managing his operations effectively unwound his real estate and casino holdings in the 1990s and almost left him personally bankrupt. He would have remained a punchline had The Apprentice not come along in 2004 and rehabilitated him.
Trump offered voters heaps of hyperbole as he dissembled his way through the 2016 campaign. He now has the federal government, an economy, and national security to tend to—and promises to keep. Everything that follows from here will be a referendum on whether or not the reality TV star who glided down an escalator at Trump Tower nearly three years ago can get away with running a reality presidency.