Trump turns America into ‘The Apprentice’
Give the man credit for one thing: he is a master impresario. All those years producing and starring in “The Apprentice,” a reality TV show where people clamor for the approbation of host Trump, have paid off for him as we’ve all been turned into his willing or unwilling apprentices.
He has successfully transferred those skills to the intricacies (and the weaknesses) of government, replete with its outmoded electoral system and a ponderous justice system where appeals pile up on appeals and even the sacrosanct Supreme Court, our last bulwark against the implosion of Democracy, is now in play, just another ball in the air. The agreement of SCOTUS to hear his argument for presidential immunity from any and all actions he took leading up to Jan. 6 may be the final piece of his dystopian fever dream. He will have de facto immunity and yes, he could have shot someone on Fifth Avenue and no one would care.
Here we are, more than three years after what was an attempted insurrection at least partially fomented by him; special prosecutor Jack Smith dotted his “i’s” and two lower courts agreed that a trial can go forward and suddenly we’re back to “rewind,” and the remembrance of Mitch McConnell holding up a Supreme Court appointment for almost a year until “the people spoke.” Is that the outcome again, waiting for a few people (not the majority) to “speak” in the swing states?
He has molded reality to his liking. Perhaps the roasting he underwent by Obama at the Correspondent’s Dinner in 2011 ignited his evil genius. A former “Apprentice” contestant, Omarosa Manigault, who was at the dinner that night (and later appointed to a post by Trump) said for “Frontline” in 2016 that “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump…. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged him — it is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
I can’t help but think of the movie “The Truman Show.” The film’s existential hero, played by Jim Carrey, is an orphan who has been raised by a corporation to live and be watched, without his knowledge, on a reality TV show 24/7. In the endlessly reverberating canyons of social media, we’re in Carrey’s position. But this is The Trump Show and he is the star in a terrarium of alternative truths, an environment where he can pull the news levers of his own making. Our role is to be spellbound and breathlessly react to the day’s news, such as the “border crisis” that had bi-partisan support to ameliorate, until he warned Republicans to reject it.
How or why do traditional Republican members of Congress go along with this? Perhaps it’s fear of retribution — and I don’t mean not being reelected. This week Reuters reported: “Judges and prosecutors are facing repeated threats of violence as they handle cases related to Trump, interviews and documents reveal. The wave of intimidation follows the ex-president’s attacks on judges as corrupt and biased – and some worry it threatens America’s long tradition of judicial independence.”
Adolph Hitler molded his own reality of absolute authority. We seem to be heading there, and it’s in full view, nothing subtle. And yet when we arrive at the end of The Trump Show, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
More than a century ago, William Butler Yeats wrote his poem “The Second Coming,” in which he cautioned that “Things fall apart; / the centre cannot hold…./ The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
It is time to revisit that poem and read it with The Trump Show in mind.
Robert Hagelstein, a resident of Palm Beach Gardens, is the author of “Waiting for Someone to Explain It: The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense” (2019) and “Explaining It to Someone: Learning From the Arts” (2020).
Adolph Hitler molded his own reality of absolute authority. We seem to be heading there, and it’s in full view, nothing subtle. And yet when we arrive at the end of The Trump Show, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.