Tonight’s the first night of Tom Arnold’s TV show on the hunt for the Trump Tapes.
It’s like an even lower budget TMZ with a much more affable host. Lots of testimonials to Trump’s racism, homophobia, and misogyny but no Apprentice outtake tapes. The show does lead with some Penn Jillette amusing quotes, but none of these things will bring down the Trump regime.
The current PR hook is that Ronan Farrow may have significant numbers of Apprentice program tapes.
The impression as it has been since 2016, is that Americans cannot get past the celebrity novelty that may have begun with electing Reagan, prefigured perhaps with California electing George Murphy.
Over 100 former crew members are worried about being black-listed, yet they can attest to Trump’s sleaziness. More amusing is Arnold getting restaurant workers to read the statements of seven Apprentice crew who didn’t want to be shown on air.
The most 2018 thing about Viceland’s new series The Hunt for the Trump Tapes With Tom Arnold is how impossible it is to tell which portions of it are self-promotion and which parts of it are sincere. On some level, I really do think that Arnold wants to take down Donald Trump, by any means necessary. On another level, though, I don’t understand why he thinks he’s the guy to do it beyond the fact that it will get him back on TV.
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In its own way, The Hunt for the Trump Tapes underlines a certain brand of the anti-Trump resistance, a brand that believes Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime aberration, a nightmare that can be stopped if the right piece of information can be found to wake everybody up — and not, instead, a manifestation of a certain American id that has always and will always be there.
These arguments seem, to me, to ignore that the right piece of information has been found over and over and over again, and yet those who support Trump continue to support him because he has no shame.
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Tom Arnold wants to ditch Trump, sure, but what he really wants is a sense that the world he once thought he lived in wasn’t a lie.
The problem is, we don’t need tapes to confirm the obvious: Trump is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist piece of work. We know this based on his policies, and hell, even his public statements. And while some tapes would undoubtedly come in handy during the impending battle against Trump and his administration, it’s doubtful they’d have an actual effect on his politics or tenure. Just look at the Access Hollywood aftermath: there was a public outcry, some protests, but in the end, Trump was still elected president. It’s a little reductive to think that a cache of previously unreleased Trump comments would be the silver bullet needed to bring down his presidency.
www.thedailybeast.com/...
Fortunately there are media resources available in terms of appearance transcripts and most of Trump appearances on Howard Stern.
More remarkable is that Trump really has not evolved since the 1980s.
Because somebody had to, Larry. I watch -- and again, it's a very important point. Japan is a money machine. Saudi Arabia is a money machine. Kuwait. These are money machines, the greatest ever created. The United States is -- if it were a corporation, it would be bankrupt. It's losing two hundred billion dollars a year. For years now it's been losing that. What right do we have to go out and defend -- why aren't these countries, these wealthy money machines, paying us for the defense of their freedom and their nations? Why aren't they paying us?
CNN: Donald Trump Interview on Larry King Live - September 2, 1987
Donald Trump called into the Howard Stern Show many times before being elected President in 2016. He discussed sex, relationships, family, and even politics. We’ve collected recordings of as many of these appearances as we could find. If you have any that we are missing or have any other comments, please get in touch: chris@chrisgherbert.com.
“Trump on Stern” was created by Chris Herbert with assistance from Barry Rubin. We believe these interviews are an essential resource for understanding Donald Trump and should be accessible to the American people — in full.