It has become a global ritual: you wake up each morning and grab your phone to catch up on the latest episode of The Trump Show, the addictive reality TV series. Which character has been humiliated, investigated or sacked? This has been the most distracting political year of my lifetime, and potentially the most dangerous. It’s not only Trump’s fault. After all, we are the viewers.
People in reality TV admire Trump as an astute professional. In 2015, after US TV audiences began to fall, he jumped to politics and put on a new show. This is not a metaphor: he still thinks like a reality performer. Reality TV perches between fiction and non-fiction, which is the spot where Trump feels happiest. Reality shows have scripted plots or formats, but partially real characters. Trump, several of whose companies have been bankrupted, played a successful businessman on TV, and so viewers could imagine him playing one in the White House.
Season one of Trump’s political show was the presidential campaign. It used the standard industry format known as “reality competition” (kicking the other contestants off the island), only with bigger stakes (the presidency) and A-list celebrities (who rarely consent to appear on reality TV).