Preface
I wrote this piece Thursday afternoon and set it to go online on Friday morning. This was before watching Rachel Maddow that night where she read excerpts from the soon to be published book “A Warning” by Anonymous. I realized that the tone of this piece was too frivolous.
Getting Trump out of office as soon as possible is deadly serious.
In fact even as one of the duty to warn therapists who has been writing for three years about Trump’s being a dangerous malignant narcissist who made decisions on impulse often based on no information or misinformation and on paranoia I hadn’t known how people described in the book as the “steady state” or “the adults in the room” tried desperately to thwart his worst impulsive decisions.
I knew it was bad.
Until learning about these excerpts I hadn’t realized just how bad it was, and how bad it is.
It appears from the excerpts Rachel read that there were many instances where had it not been for intervention from the members of the so-called steady state he would have implemented even more horrendous actions, some which could or would have resulted in more loss of life and misery than he has already caused.
If you missed Rachel Maddow you can watch the 11 minute segment here. You can read the excerpts on RawStory here.
‘YOU’RE FIRED, JOHN BOLTON, BUH-BYE…’ Trump and ‘Apprentice’ Creator Mark Burnett Are Discussing Their Next TV Show — The president misses his reality-TV days and is thinking of what show he can create once he’s out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Since taking office in early 2017, the president has confided to close associates that he misses hosting The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, the reality-TV staples he left behind to become the Republican Party standard-bearer and then the leader of the free world. Trump has waxed nostalgic about how he created what he sees as the greatest thing reality television has ever seen. Two sources who’ve spoken to him recall Trump saying that he will perhaps one day revisit the medium.
And it may not just be fits of nostalgia.
According to three people with knowledge of the situation and another source close to Trump, Apprentice creator Mark Burnett and the president have sporadically kept in touch, mostly over the phone, since Trump won the election. The pair remain friends, these sources say, and have discussed reviving their creative partnership, pitching each other details on potential TV projects to be filmed after the Trump presidency.
One of the ideas kicked around by Burnett and the president was shooting a new version of the Trump
-branded Apprentice, tentatively titled The Apprentice: White House, and to produce it shortly after the president leaves office. This time, however, the TV program would be explicitly politics-themed and take full advantage of Trump’s status as a former president of the United States and a newfound Republican kingmaker.
Of course there’s this little bit of hypocrisy: Donald Trump Pushes for Investigation Into Barack Obama's 'Ridiculous' Netflix Deal, Book Deal, and
President Donald Trump again brought up Barack Obama’s Netflix deal, grousing that his predecessor didn’t face the same criticism that Trump himself has for his now-scuttled plan to host the G7 summit at the Trump Doral resort. “Many other presidents, there weren’t too many really rich presidents, but therewere a few. They ran their business,” Trump said. “Hey, Obama made a deal fora book. Is that running a business? I’m sure he didn’t even discuss it while hewas president. He has to deal with Netflix. When did they start talking about that?” Deadline
If the show “Apprentice — White House” made it on air it would be a fabulously successful show with Trump’s fans and it would be great if Trump decided that he was so fed up with his job he simply resigned to be a reality TV mega-star.
There would be no shortage of D list celebrities to compete for the coveted faux job on the faux White House staff.
Trump would be able to have a realistic replica of the Oval Office built. Who needs a presidential library when you can have an Oval Office you can actually spend time in pretending to still be president?
If they really wanted to pull out the stops if season one was successful they could increase the budget for the second season and could build a replica of the interior of Air Force One and recreate the South Lawn complete a fake White House facade along with Marine One in the background. Basically, though, this could be pulled off on a very low budget. It could all be shot on a sound stage with one set.
There is no shortage of jobs Trump’s celebrities could compete for: Kid Rock vs. Gary Busey for Attorney General or The Hulk vs. Clint Eastwood for Secretary of Defense. You can come up with more in the comment section. How about this in the category of the Devil made me suggest this: who will compete for the position of his fourth wife and the fake First Lady? Perhaps he star of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" and former Celebrity Apprentice contestant Teresa Giudice (she’d to get divorced) and also the newly divorced Kellyanne Elizabeth Fitzpatrick...
There are two major glitches in the plan. Burnett and Trump would have to find a network to air the show, and related to that, the network would have to find sponsors who were boycott proof.
Don’t jump to conclusions that Fox would buy it because Disney bought Fox entertainment assets in $52.4 billion deal and while Rupert Murdoch is still a stakeholder he doesn’t make all the decisions.
Whoever buys this show which would have a guaranteed fan base they would need to make money from it. Unless Trump was able to put together the financing to start his own cable network with owners who wanted to be assured of a substantial return on their investment he’d need to have the show on an existing network. To actually have a new cable network it would have to have more than just one star vehicle. It would need other shows that people would watch. Besides starting a cable network isn't easy. “NRATV (National Rifle Association Television) was the online video channel of the National Rifle Association. It was established as an offshoot of NRA News in 2016 and ceased production in 2019.”
I’ve been thinking about potential sponsors who could sustain a boycott by those who objected to the show or the new Trump network. No station or new network wants headlines like this: Fox News courts advertisers after brands flee Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.
Perhaps NASCAR, or maybe there is a beer company favored by Trump supporters and hardly anybody else so here's what I came up with on Google: Trump Supporter or Not, You Can Do Better Than Yuengling.
While campaigning for his father on Monday, Eric Trump visited the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where 73-year-old brewery owner Dick Yuengling Jr. came out in support of Donald Trump. "Our guys are behind your father," he said. "We need him in there." This caused quite a few people to declare that they'd stop drinking beer made by the 187-year-old brewery, with some calling for an all out boycott.
I searched some more and was reminded about Hobby Lobby and this list: 5 Popular Companies Helping Fund Trump's 2020 Campaign.
I also ran across several websites devoted to publicizing the names of companies people may want to boycott to protest Trump policies, for example Grab Your Wallet which is a bare bones list and a much shorter Boycott Trump List from Dine Good. Every time a major company does something to support Trump it faces a possible call for a boycott, for example from two weeks ago The Latest Company To Support Donald Trump Is Louis Vuitton As LVMH CEO Invites Him To Ribbon Cutting And Photo Opp At New Factory In Texas.
So there are companies who could sponsor “The Apprentice — White House” or even shows on a new Trump network. The question remains whether they would find it profitable to risk a boycott for advertising on Trump’s vanity project?
After all they read articles like this from Vanity Fair from Nov. 6th:
Profits fell 89% from 2015 to 2018, from $16.7 million to $1.8 million, according to documents filed with Cook County, Ill. Trump’s hotel struggled even as other Chicago hotels held steady or thrived. .
There are factors mitigating against The Apprentice — White House ever finding a home on TV.
It is wishful thinking that the prospect of being able to leave the real White House for a real fake White House where he could bask in the adoration of his fans and probably get good ratings, even being able to brag honestly that he was winning his time slot, could prompt him to resign.
However, after doing the research for this story I am not so sure. While I doubt he will resign to become a reality TV star again, it is possible. I now think with the expertise of Mark Burnett he might be able to sell the show to a network which could find enough sponsors and run it at least for a limited number of episodes.
AFTERWORD
I have no doubts that the quotes Rachel read from “A Warning” are true depictions of what the author observed in the White House. Every excerpt she read was consistent with Trump’s psychopathology, as were the others read by Ari Melber on The Eleventh Hour. In fact, psychiatric diagnosis aside, many of the excerpts are consistent with what we know from observation about Trump’s behavior as demonstrated by his decisions, actions, tweets, and behavior at his rallies and in front of reporters.
In a quote in The Washington Post while the author doesn’t venture a psychiatric assessment he or she writes: “I am not qualified to diagnose the president’s mental acuity. All I can tell you is that normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness. He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity. Those who would claim otherwise are lying to themselves or to the country.”
The excerpts so far revealed are verified by comparatively minor things we know happened: for example the hurricane map fiasco to forcing staff to actually pursue the idea of buying Greenland. And then there were the actual actual life-endangering disasters like withholding crucial military aide to Ukraine to most recently impulsively and without consultation with experts giving the green light to Turkey to invade Syria, selling out the Kurds.
My musing and speculating about Trump’s resigning because things were just getting too hot for him and creating an alternate universe where he could live in a delusional world where he was still the president complete with his adoring fans was meant as a thought exercise even though it could very well happen.
How ironic it would be if Mark Burnett (who really became a television wunderkind of producing cheap reality TV shows *) went down in history as one of the most ironic characters in the Trump drama. After all, if anyone can be credited with making Trump president it is the man who produced and guided him through The Apprentice. If by helping him find a satisfying way to leave the presidency early he would end up as a strangely heroic figure.
* Burnett is also now chairman of MGM Worldwide Television where he oversees scripted television shows including Condor, Fargo (FX), Get Shorty (EPIX), The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu), and Vikings which are obviously not in the category of the cheap to produce shows he brought to the screen like The Apprentice, Shark Tank, The Voice etc.
YouTube built detailed replicas of the Oval Office in its offices which can be rented — take a look inside
The Poll
What do you think about Trump starring in a new version of The Apprentice? Predict now and file away your answer for bragging rights for when Trump loses the election (assuming he isn’t removed from office or resigns).