INTRODUCTION
xi “I’ve always felt that money, power, and sex”: Rona Barrett, interview by Robert Samuels, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/graphics/politics/trump-archive/docs/rona-barrett-interview-by-robert-samuels.pdf.
xii The Washington Post’s Tom Shales: Tom Shales, “Rona to Riches,” Washington Post, July 24, 1981.
xii Thirty-five years later: Interview with Donald J. Trump, Fox & Friends, Fox News Channel, June 15, 2015.
xiii “The choice of this theme”: Neil Postman, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Et cetera 42, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 13–18.
xiv Postman expanded on this argument: Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1985).
xiv Cable TV was not yet in half: Nielsen Company, “Television Audience 2008,” 2, https://tvbtn.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/tva_2008_071709.pdf.
xv Richard Hofstadter warned that electronic media: “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt,” The American Scholar 24, no. 1 (Winter 1954–55): 9–27.
xv George W. S. Trow argued: George W. S. Trow, Within the Context of No Context (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981).
xvi “the massive collection”: Postman, Amusing, 161.
xvi “The whole age of computer”: “Trump: Computers Complicate Lives,” CNN.com, Dec. 30, 2016.
xviii The Crain’s article actually repeated a claim: Timothy O’Brien, TrumpNation (New York: Open Road, 2015), Kindle edition.
xviii “What Trump does not like is losing”: James Poniewozik, “BREAKING: Donald Trump Begins Not Running for President,” Time.com, Feb. 11, 2011.
xix “For television purposes, he looked the part”: James Poniewozik, “What The Apprentice Taught Donald Trump About Campaigning,” New York Times, Oct. 9, 2015.
xxi “Like so much about Trump”: Tony Schwartz, “I Wrote ‘The Art of the Deal’ with Trump. His Self-Sabotage Is Rooted in His Past,” Washington Post, May 16, 2017.
xxi “No good has come of it”: Trow, Within the Context, 45.
xxi Postman lumped in: Postman, Amusing, 160.
Episode 1: UNREAL ESTATE
3 More than 140,000 people: James A. Von Schilling, The Magic Window: American Television, 1939–1953 (Binghamton: Haworth, 2003), 73.
3 According to a “Talk of the Town” item: “At the Knife & Fork,” The New Yorker, June 29, 1946, 16.
4 “I still remember my mother”: Donald J. Trump, with Tony Schwartz, Trump: The Art of the Deal (New York: Random, 1987), 80.
5 “information-action ratio”: Postman, Amusing, 69.
6 “For most people there are only two places”: Don DeLillo, White Noise (New York: Penguin, 1985), 66.
6 the guitar-strumming preacher: Michael Pollak, “Rex Humbard, 88, Dies, Pioneer of TV Evangelism,” New York Times, Sept. 23, 2007.
6 Trump later recalled watching Billy Graham’s televised Crusades: Fox & Friends, Fox News Network, 25 Apr. 2011.
6 “as if it were a theatrical performance”: Robert Lacey, Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 183.
7 The monarchy ultimately granted access: Mark Easton, “Coronation 1953: Magic Moment the TV Cameras Missed,” BBC.com, June 4, 2013.
7 NBC and CBS raced to get footage: Anton Reminih, “Crowning Joke of Coronation: Costly TV Race,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1953, sec. F, 1.
7 “a symbolic marker of the beginning”: John Finch, Michael Cox, and Marjorie Giles, eds., Granada Television: The First Generation (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 2.
7 derived from a song: David Haven Blake, Liking Ike: Eisenhower, Advertising, and the Rise of Celebrity Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 57.
7 In October 1956, Dwight Eisenhower capped off: Blake, Liking Ike, 16–20.
9 “Tomorrow’s children, through the great new medium”: Cecilia Tichi, The Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 191.
9 “Television can be the window to the whole world”: “Tomorrow Television,” Army-Navy Screen Magazine, 1945.
9 A 1954 study cited “television addiction”: Joost A. M. Meerloo, “Television Addiction and Reactive Apathy,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 120, nos. 3–4 (Sept.–Oct. 1954): 290–91.
9 His family owned a color TV set: Paul Schwartzman and Michael E. Miller, “Confident. Incorrigible. Bully: Little Donny Was a Lot Like Candidate Donald Trump,” Washington Post, June 22, 2016.
9 A neighbor later recalled: Jason Horowitz, “Trump’s Queens Neighborhood Contrasts with the Diverse Area Around It,” New York Times, Sept. 23, 2015, A15.
9 Fred Trump had applied a rudimentary form: Michael D’Antonio, The Truth About Trump (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2016), 30, 38, 62.
11 In a 1994 interview: Nancy Collins, “Donald Trump Talks Family, Women in Unearthed Transcript: ‘When I Come Home and Dinner’s Not Ready, I Go Through the Roof,’ ” Hollywood Reporter, Oct. 13, 2016.
11 Jack Webb’s Dragnet: Alyssa Rosenberg, “How Police Censorship Shaped Hollywood,” Washington Post, Oct. 24, 2016.
12 after Fred Trump discovered his son’s collection of switchblades: Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power (New York: Scribner, 2016), 37–38.
13 “a young, healthy, simple girl”: Oriana Fallaci, “Hugh Hefner: ‘I Am in the Center of the World,’ ” Look, Jan. 10, 1967.
13 “a Midwestern Methodist’s vision of sin”: “Think Clean,” Time, Mar. 3, 1967.
13 “That’s how we learned about women”: The Choice 2016, PBS, Sept. 27, 2016.
13 “I was attracted to the glamour”: Trump, Art of the Deal, 77.
14 In a 1997 profile: Mark Singer, “Trump Solo,” The New Yorker, May 19, 1997, 56.
14 In a 2002 interview: Errol Morris, interview by Anthony Audi, Literary Hub, Oct. 27, 2016.
14 At age twenty-three: Michael Paulson, “For a Young Donald J. Trump, Broadway Held Sway.” New York Times, March 7, 2016, C1.
15 In Clive Barnes’s eventual New York Times review: Clive Barnes, “Theater: ‘Paris Is Out!’ ” New York Times, Feb. 3, 1970, 35.
15 including a plan to coproduce W.C.: Playbill for Paris Is Out!, Jan. 1970.
15 “It’s a crummy business”: Graydon Carter, “Donald Trump Gets What He Wants,” GQ, May 1984.
15 “I am going to go into real estate”: Timothy O’Brien, TrumpNation (New York: Open Road, 2015), Kindle edition.
15 Trump was eventually able: Robert E. Tomasson, “Deal Negotiated for Commodore,” New York Times, May 4, 1975, 41.
16 “I’m not Walt Disney”: “Walt Disney (Part 1),” American Experience, PBS, Sept. 14, 2015.
17 “Girls of Trump”: Wayne Barrett, Trump, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention (New York: Regan Arts, 2016), 421.
17 Years later, Trump recognized the connection: Surya Yalamanchili, “My Night at the Playboy Mansion with Donald Trump,” Politico, Apr. 15, 2016.
17 Rupert Murdoch, the Australian tabloid mogul: Jonathan Mahler, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City (New York: Picador, 2005), 33–43.
18 Former Newsday gossip columnist A. J. Benza: The Confidence Man, dir. Fisher Stevens, Netflix, Jan. 26, 2018.
18 “Like an elephant in your bathtub”: Susan Mulcahy, My Lips Are Sealed: Confessions of a Gossip Columnist (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 226.
18 “Donald would always gather me up”: Liz Smith, “I Think I Invented the Trumps: Part I,” New York Social Diary, Aug. 24, 2015.
18 Trump’s big early coup: Judy Klemesrud, “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Buys Buildings,” New York Times, Nov. 1, 1976, 41.
18 It was actually leased by his father: David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner, “Trump Took Part in Suspect Schemes to Avoid Tax Bills,” New York Times, Oct. 3, 2018, A1.
18 The school’s newspaper later debunked this: Alex Rabin and Rebecca Tan, “Was Trump Really a Top Student at Wharton? His Classmates Say Not So Much,” Daily Pennsylvanian, Feb. 15, 2017.
19 “By surrounding the consumer with images”: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978), 180–81.
Episode 2: THE LEAST OBJECTIONABLE PROGRAM
22 “I just wasn’t prepared”: Trump, Art of the Deal, 174.
23 The science writer Sharon Begley: “Trump Wasn’t Always So Linguistically Challenged. What Could Explain the Change?” Stat, May 23, 2017.
25 The ideal TV show of the time: Paul Klein, “Why You Watch What You Watch When You Watch,” TV Guide, July 24, 1971, 6–10.
26 Political analysts disagree: Lydia Saad, “Presidential Debates Rarely Game-Changers,” Gallup.com, Sept. 25, 2008; Gary Langer, “The Impact of Debates? It’s Debatable,” abcnews.com, Sept. 26, 2016.
27 whom cultural critic Kurt Andersen: Kurt Andersen, “Entertainer-in-Chief,” The New Yorker, Feb. 16, 1998, 34.
27 “how they looked, fixed their gaze”: Postman, Amusing, 97.
29 CBS executive Michael Dann: William Grimes, “Michael Dann, TV Programmer, Dies at 94; Scheduled Horowitz and Hillbillies,” New York Times, May 31, 2016, A16.
30 By the mid-’70s, the networks wanted optimistic: Josh Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America: TV in an Era of Change, 1968–1978 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 104–21.
31 As Time magazine put it in 1985: Richard Corliss, “Video: Coming Up from Nowhere,” Time, Sept. 16, 1985.
31 In 1980, according to Nielsen: Nielsen Company, “Television Audience 2008,” 3.
32 One of Trump’s biographers: Emily Yoffe, “Is Donald Trump a TV Addict?” Politico, July 7, 2017.
32 The Nielsen top ten in the 1970s: Tim Brooks and Earle F. Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows: 1946–Present (New York: Ballantine, 2007).
34 “Maybe it wasn’t completely coincidental”: David Bianculli, Dictionary of Teleliteracy: Television’s 500 Biggest Hits, Misses, and Events (New York: Continuum, 1996), 78.
34 Later, in a 1990 interview with Playboy: Glenn Plaskin, interview with Donald Trump, Playboy, March 1990.
35 It was a modest success and tepidly reviewed: Chris Nashawaty, Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story (New York: Flatiron, 2018), 7.
36 told Ramis to rewrite the script: Nashawaty, Caddyshack, 160.
Episode 3: MONOPOLY
38 The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard: Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, Mark Poster, ed., second ed. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002), 60.
39 So is the lettering on the nameplate: Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Regan, 2016), 179.
40 He encouraged the rumor: Harry Hurt III, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald Trump (Brattleboro, VT: Echo Point, 2016), Kindle edition.
41 Leach had squabbled with a producer: Robin Leach, interview by Oprah Winfrey, Oprah: Where Are They Now? Nov. 30, 2014.
41 In People magazine, he said: Lee Wohlfert-Wihlborg, “In the Manhattan Real Estate Game, Billionaire Donald Trump Holds the Winning Cards,” People, Nov. 16, 1981.
42 Culture journalist Anne Helen Petersen has written: “The Key to Trump Is Reading Him Like a Celebrity,” BuzzFeed, Dec. 12, 2016.
42 Trump chatted up Haskell: The Nikki Haskell Show, season 1, episode 11.
43 “Don’t you need fresh air?”: Donald Trump All American, BBC2, Nov. 28, 2010.
46 As the sociologist Juliet B. Schor: Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (New York: Basic, 1998).
47 Thorstein Veblen identified the idea: Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (1899; Mineola, NY: Dover, 2012), Kindle edition.
47 In her close read of 1980s MTV: E. Ann Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture. (New York: Routledge, 1987), 30.
48 “We’ll be doing for TV”: Mark Goodman, MTV, Aug. 1, 1981.
48 Unlike many previous pop-music phenomena: Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks, I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (New York: Plume, 2011), e-book edition.
48 “pop open an MTV”: “Pop Open an MTV,” posted on YouTube, Jan. 23, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5t_fVX7zdY.
49 The 1980 best seller: Lisa Birnbach, Jonathan Roberts, Carol McD. Wallace, and Mason Wiley, The Official Preppy Handbook (New York: Workman, 1980).
51 he’d proudly wear blue jeans: “Carter Says He’ll Wear Jeans,” Associated Press, Dec. 14, 1976.
51 In Washington, the Reagans transformed: Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 1991), 5, 446.
52 The number-one nonfiction book: Lee Iacocca, with William Novak, Iacocca: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam, 1984).
54 “The most successful celebrities are products”: Trow, Within the Context, 48.
54 But Trump kept a fond opinion: Grace Marston, “Andy Warhol Talks About Donald Trump Throughout the Mid-1980s,” Warhol Blog, Jan. 21, 2016.
55 He boasted to GQ in 1984: Carter, “Donald Trump Gets What He Wants.”
55 He tried to sell NBC: Eliot Brown, “Remember Trump City?” New York Observer, Aug. 5, 2008.
56 Jimmy Breslin, the Newsday columnist, described it: “The Art of the Trump: Call It Corum’s Law,” Newsday, June 7, 1990.
56 Playgirl magazine named him to its 1986 list: Wayne King and Warren Weaver Jr., “Washington Talk: Briefing; More Sex,” New York Times, Aug. 5, 1986.
57 According to Jeffrey Breslow: Kranish and Fisher, Trump Revealed, 110.
58 Monopoly, the most direct inspiration: Mary Pilon, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015).
Episode 4: AS HIMSELF
61 When Home Alone 2 came out: “Company News; Trump’s Plaza Hotel Bankruptcy Plan Approved,” New York Times, Dec. 12, 1992.
61 There was an almost impossible neatness: Barrett, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth, 417.
61 Trump was “astonished”: Barrett, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth, 427.
62 But he was put on a $450,000-a-month budget: Kranish and Fisher, Trump Revealed, 195.
62 Frank Rich christened “mediathons”: Frank Rich, “The Age of the Mediathon,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 29, 2000.
62 The real-life drama played: Mary H. J. Farrell, “The Trumps Head for Divorce Court,” People, Feb. 26, 1990.
62 fed to the paper by Trump himself: Jill Brooke, “The Real Story Behind Donald Trump’s Infamous ‘Best Sex I’ve Ever Had’ Headline,” Hollywood Reporter, Apr. 12, 2018.
63 The New York satire magazine Spy: Spy, Sept. 1990, Oct. 1986, and July 1990.
64 You can understand the Trump of this period: Aaron Hanlon, “Postmodernism Didn’t Cause Trump. It Explains Him,” Washington Post, Aug. 31, 2018.
64 copy or representation: Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991).
64 “The image can no longer imagine the real”: Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime (New York: Verso, 1996), 4.
64 Increasingly his business ventures: D’Antonio, The Truth about Trump, 233.
64 “It’s Donald J. Trump. All 52 stories of him”: Robin Pogrebin, “52-Story Comeback Is So Very Trump; Columbus Circle Tower Proclaims That Modesty Is an Overrated Virtue,” New York Times, Apr. 25, 1996.
65 In 1877, the Quaker Oats company registered a trademark: “Our Oat Origins,” The Quaker Oat Company, 2019, http://www.quakeroats.com/about-quaker-oats/content/quaker-history.aspx.
65 In 1890, a grain-milling company hired a former slave: Maurice M. Manring, Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998).
65 In 1964, when Colonel Harland Sanders sold his company: William Whitworth, “Kentucky-Fried,” The New Yorker, Feb. 14, 1970.
68 In the sitcom business at the time: Kranish and Fisher, Trump Revealed, 264.
69 By 1991, its cover featured a bicycle: Janice Castro, “The Simple Life,” Time, Apr. 8, 1991.
70 “one step removed from animals”: Donald J. Trump, with Charles Leerhsen, Trump: Surviving at the Top (New York: Random, 1990), 225.
72 He de-emphasized traditional TV ads: Elizabeth Kolbert, “Perot’s 30-Minute TV Ads Defy the Experts, Again,” New York Times, Oct. 27, 1992.
73 In Dallas, the Los Angeles Times reported: Tom Furlong, “Perot as Hometown Hero: Just Don’t Get in His Way,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1992.
74 It was, to borrow the name of a 1996 PBS documentary: Triumph of the Nerds, Channel 4/PBS, Apr. 14, 1996.
75 To be a nerd was to oppose: Benjamin Nugent, American Nerd: The Story of My People (New York: Scribner, 2009), 9.
75 There was one member of the nerdocracy: Alan Deutschman, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (New York: Broadway, 2000).
76 “wants to be Madonna”: Mark Singer, “Trump Solo,” The New Yorker, May 19, 1997.
76 in ’90s hip-hop lyrics: Allison McCann, “Hip-Hop Is Turning on Donald Trump,” FiveThirtyEight, July 14, 2016.
77 In 1993, he published an essay: David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 151–94.
78 “The greatest humbug of all”: P. T. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World: An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, In All Ages (New York: Carleton, 1865).
79 Wallace’s short story “My Appearance”: David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair (New York: Norton, 1989).
80 Donald Trump appeared on Letterman’s shows: Jason Zinoman, “The Misunderstood History of Trump on Letterman,” New York Times, Aug. 15, 2017.
80 In a 1992 appearance: Late Night with David Letterman, NBC, May 21, 1992.
81 Neal Gabler writes in Life the Movie: Neal Gabler, Life the Movie (New York: Knopf, 1998), 170–71.
82 The Art of the Comeback’s story is a Hollywood story: Donald J. Trump, with Kate Bohner, Trump: The Art of the Comeback (New York: Times, 1997), xi–xx.
82 When Matt Lauer on the Today show asked him: Today, NBC, Nov. 3, 1997.
Episode 5: THE DARK SIDE
85 Profit’s creators were inspired by Shakespeare’s Richard III: Harriet Winslow, “Risky Business,” Washington Post, May 5, 1996.
86 “Its principal conceit”: John Leonard, Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures (New York: New Press, 1997), 105.
87 “Sex had become mainstream”: David Friend, The Naughty Nineties (New York: Twelve, 2017), 2.
88 In Anatomy of Criticism: Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 34–35.
90 “Clean it up, deterge it”: Laura Z. Hobson, “As I Listened to Archie Say ‘Hebe’. . .” New York Times, Sept. 12, 1971, D1.
91 CBS anticipated this before the show premiered: Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 36.
91 “Dude, he’s Archie Bunker”: Jeremy W. Peters and Maggie Haberman, “Bannon Was Set for a Graceful Exit. Then Came Charlottesville,” New York Times, Aug. 20, 2017.
93 “an actor whom I’ve greatly admired”: Trump, Surviving, 81.
94 As Brett Martin notes: Brett Martin, Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revoution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad (New York: Penguin, 2013), 13.
95 “The object of all these shows in the past”: Martin, Difficult Men, 287.
97 “I like to believe there is some comeuppance”: David Segal, “Art of Darkness,” New York Times Magazine, July 10, 2011, 18.
97 what the New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum calls “bad fans”: Emily Nussbaum, “That Mind-Bending Phone Call on Last Night’s Breaking Bad,” Newyorker.com, Sept. 16, 2013.
98 This, critic Alan Sepinwall pointed out: Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: How The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost, and Other Groundbreaking Dramas Changed TV Forever (New York: Touchstone, 2015), Kindle edition.
98 In a New York Times op-ed: Anna Gunn, “I Have a Character Issue,” New York Times Aug. 24, 2013, A21.
98 On surveillance tapes: James Poniewozik, “They Pull You Back In,” Time, Jan. 9, 2000.
98 Life imitated, or parodied: Ian Crouch, “Of Course Roger Stone Thinks That He Lives in The Godfather,” Newyorker.com, Jan. 25, 2019.
100 One week in October 2001: Nicholas Kristof, “An American Hiroshima,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 2004.
100 conservative essayist Michael Anton: Michael Anton [as Publius Decius Mus], “The Flight 93 Election,” Claremont Review of Books, Sept. 5, 2016.
100 Five days after the attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney: Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 16, 2001.
101 military officers had to deal with soldiers who now believed: Jane Mayer, “Whatever It Takes,” The New Yorker, Feb. 19, 2007, 66.
101 In the 2008 primary debates: Ari Melber, “The GOP’s Ticking Time Bomb,” Huffington Post, Dec. 12, 2007.
101 In a 2016 debate, Donald Trump endorsed: Tessa Berenson, “Donald Trump Defends Torture at Republican Debate,” Time.com, March 3, 2016.
102 Disney’s Davy Crockett: Olivia Waxman, “Fact-Checking ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett,’ ” Time.com, Aug. 17, 2016.
102 One draft script had a detective smashing a coin box: Gitlin, Inside Prime Time, 288.
102 The creator, Shawn Ryan, had kicked around: Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised.
105 The outing recalled the scene: Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
106 “I am Batman”: Thomas Lake, “ ‘I Am Batman,’ Trump Tells Boy on Helicopter Ride,” CNN.com, Aug. 17, 2015.
Episode 6: MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY!
108 In this two-hour beauty-pageant-cum-meat-market: James Poniewozik, “Fox’s Bride Idea,” Time, Feb. 20, 2000.
109 His 1200-square-foot house in Encinitas, California: Lisa de Moraes, “ ‘Multi-Millionaire’ Formula Goes Bankrupt,” Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2000, C1.
109 Multi-Millionaire was the brainchild of Mike Darnell: Laura Bradley, “Meet the Mad Genius Who Invented Reality TV as We Know It,” Vanity Fair, Apr. 24, 2017.
109 Rockwell was revealed: de Moraes, “ ‘Multi-Millionaire’ Formula Goes Bankrupt.”
110 The show’s training of its audience was so successful: Dustin Rowles, “The Time a Real Plane Hijacking Was Mistaken for a Candid Camera Stunt,” Uproxx, Oct. 24, 2015.
110 NBC’s Real People valorized unsung Americans: Brooks and Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 844.
111 The third season, set in San Francisco: Kate Aurthur, “Looking Back at The Real World: San Francisco, the Show That Changed the World,” BuzzFeed, Jan. 7, 2014.
111 In 1991, I sat in a packed crowd: George Bush, “Remarks at the University of Michigan Commencement Ceremony in Ann Arbor,” May 4, 1991.
112 Reality fans might not know exactly how: James Poniewozik, “How Reality TV Fakes It,” Time, Jan. 29, 2006.
114 “Everybody on the crew wanted Rudy to win”: Jeff Probst, “30 Epic Seasons,” Survivor: 30 Seasons: The Official CBS Collector’s Edition, Feb.–Mar. 2015, 20–21.
114 Courtney Robertson, after winning The Bachelor: Courtney Robertson, I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality-Show Villain (New York: It, 2014).
115 For his 1975 essay “Travels in Hyperreality”: Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality: Essays (New York: Harvest, 1990), 44.
117 There were dating shows, quiz shows: James Poniewozik, “Reality TV at 10: How It’s Changed Television—and Us,” Time, Feb. 22, 2010.
118 It was there, on a tiki-beach set: Marc Fisher, “Donald Trump, Remade by Reality TV,” Washington Post, Jan. 27, 2016.
118 After the Survivor finale: Fisher, “Donald Trump, Remade by Reality TV.”
118 “He told me all the right things”: Donald J. Trump, interview by the author, Dec. 2003.
119 The author Fran Lebowitz would later say: Emily Jane Fox, “Let Fran Lebowitz Soothe All Your Election-Related Worries,” Vanity Fair, Oct. 20, 2016.
123 Producers designed the set: The Confidence Man.
123 Trump’s often-repeated belief that success is genetic: D’Antonio, The Truth About Trump, 326–27.
125 “When I was a good girl”: Poniewozik, “How Reality TV Fakes It.”
125 as media critic Jennifer L. Pozner pointed out: Pozner, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV (Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2010), 164–67.
126 Trump hired her to a $179,700-a-year White House position: Elaina Plott, “No One Knows What Omarosa Is Doing in the White House—Even Omarosa,” Daily Beast, Nov. 13, 2017.
127 Was his instinct actually that unerring?: A. J. Catoline, “Editing Trump: The Making of a Reality TV Star Who Would Be President,” Cinemontage, Oct. 12, 2016, http://cinemontage.org/editing-trump-reality-tv-star-who-would-be-president/.
127 Clay Aiken, a former American Idol finalist: Domecast (podcast), July 8, 2017.
127 “Make Trump look good”: Catoline, “Editing Trump.”
127 “chipped furniture”: Patrick Radden Keefe, “How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success,” The New Yorker, Jan. 7, 2019.
128 Braun described the music: Catoline, “Editing Trump.”
131 This is an ancient, apocryphal tale: Snopes.com, “Trumped Up.”
132 A 2006 Time magazine poll: Poniewozik, “How Reality TV Fakes It.”
133 He fires Zervos: Brandy Zadrozny, “Apprentice Contestant Summer Zervos Slaps Donald Trump with Defamation Lawsuit,” Daily Beast, Jan. 17, 2017.
135 “to exaggerate the unique part of themselves”: Omarosa Manigault Newman, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House (New York: Gallery, 2018), Kindle edition.
136 Said Jim Dowd, NBC’s public-relations rep: Kranish and Fisher, Trump Revealed, 217.
136 hanging up a fake cover of Time magazine: David A. Fahrenthold, “A Time Magazine with Trump on the Cover Hangs in His Golf Clubs. It’s Fake,” Washington Post, June 27, 2017.
Episode 7: THE PARANOID STYLE IN AMERICA’S NEWSROOM
142 Shepard Smith, anchoring the afternoon coverage: “Fox News: Six-Year-Old Boy in a Runaway Balloon,” Studio B, Fox News, Oct. 15, 2009.
143 Michaele and Tareq Salahi: Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts, “Who Are These People? The Climbers at the Gate,” Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2009.
144 Republican representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina: “Wilson Funds Reach $1 Million After ‘You Lie’ Cry, Aide Says,” CNN.com, Sept. 12, 2009.
145 On April 18, 1930, nothing much of note happened: “There Is No News: What a Change from 1930 to Today,” BBC.com, Apr. 18, 2017.
145 “We used to believe there were only so many”: Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Atheneum, 1962), 8.
145 In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Postman, Amusing, 99–100.
146 He prepared a “doomsday tape”: Michael Ballaban, “This Is the Video CNN Will Play When the World Ends,” Jalopnik, Jan. 5, 2015.
146 Reese Schonfeld, the veteran TV journalist: Reese Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 1.
147 “For as long as the war held their interest”: Ken Auletta, Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way (New York: Vintage, 1992), 4.
147 When she was finally brought out alive: Lisa Belkin, “Death on the CNN Curve,” New York Times Magazine, July 23, 1995, 18–19.
150 Only later did researchers find: “ ‘Summer of the Shark’ in 2001 More Hype Than Fact, New Numbers Show,” University of Florida News, Feb. 18, 2002.
150 Then came the clear blue morning of September 11: Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (New York: Penguin, 2006), 21.
151 the relaxed, improvisatory, and vaguely defined: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 308–37.
151 “The general public is just not sophisticated enough”: Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country (New York: Random, 2014), 40.
151 Ailes sifted through Nixon’s video clips: Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), 234.
151 “It’s a television show”: Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President: The Classic Account of the Packaging of a Candidate (New York: Penguin, 1988), 65–67.
152 A second slogan: Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room, 199.
152 “Viewers don’t want to be informed”: Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room, 191.
153 “Has P.C. changed our view of the Founding Fathers?”: David Brock, “Roger Ailes Is Mad as Hell,” New York, Nov. 17, 1997, 35.
153 A favorite Fox perennial was “The War on Christmas”: John Gibson, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought (New York: Sentinel, 2005).
154 The divisive shorthand “blue state” and “red state”: Stephen Battaglio, “When Red Meant Democratic and Blue Meant Republican: A Brief History of TV Electoral Maps,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 2016.
154 dressed in skirts: “Former Host Gretchen Carlson: Pants Were Not Allowed on Fox & Friends,” Media Matters, Sept. 19, 2013.
155 Fox was the first cable network to deal with the flood: James Poniewozik, “The Tick, Tick, Tick of the Times,” Time, Nov. 24. 2010.
156 “The modern right wing”: Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York: Random, 2012), Kindle edition.
158 “Conspiracists,” as Kurt Andersen wrote: Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History (New York: Random, 2017), 365.
159 In 2007, the hosts spread a bogus story: Matea Gold, “They’re Having ‘Fun’ on Fox & Friends,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 21, 2008.
160 “Would you fire [George W.] Bush?”: Donald Trump, interview by Howard Stern, The Howard Stern Show, Sept. 23, 2004.
161 “Rita, I will say this”: Don King and Donald Trump, interview by Rita Cosby, Big Story Weekend, Fox News, Nov. 29, 2003.
161 Trump became part of Fox & Friends’ entertainment-news universe: Descriptions of Trump’s Fox appearances, here and throughout, are from video at the Internet TV News Archive: https://archive.org/details/tv.
163 “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship”: Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin, “Fox Settles Sex Harassment Suit as Another Anchor Abruptly Exits,” New York Times, Sept. 7, 2016, A1.
164 Since Obama had been elected: David Crary, “New Burst of Attention for Old Doubts About Obama,” Associated Press, July 23, 2009.
165 “Our current president came out of nowhere”: Donald Trump, remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Washington, DC, Feb. 10, 2011.
166 Good Morning America introduced him: Donald Trump, interview by Ashleigh Banfield, Good Morning America, ABC, March 17, 2011.
166 To CNN’s Anderson Cooper: Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, Apr. 25, 2011.
167 “He can finally get back to the issues that matter”: Barack Obama, “ ‘The President’s Speech’ at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” May 1, 2011.
167 “Every critic, every detractor”: The Choice 2016.
169 A former aide said Trump was originally “indifferent”: Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (New York: Penguin, 2017), 111.
170 The concept of the wall itself: Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Peter Baker, “How the Border Wall Is Boxing Trump In,” New York Times, Jan. 5, 2019.
Episode 8: THE MOST OBJECTIONABLE PROGRAM
173 “The problem with television is that the people must sit”: Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., “Act I, Scene I: Telecasts to Homes to Begin on April 30—World’s Fair to Be the Stage,” New York Times, Mar. 19, 1939, 144.
175 The news site The Outline: Matt Porter, “Trump’s First Real Tweet Was on July 6, 2011,” Outline, Nov. 3, 2017.
177 Ziering later appeared on The Celebrity Apprentice: Seth Abramovitch, “How Sharknado Casts Its C-Listers and Nearly Landed Trump as President,” Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 2, 2017.
177 Syfy did very little traditional advertising: Amar Toor, “Twitter Twister: Why Did Sharknado Take a Huge Bite Out of the Internet?” Verge, July 12, 2013.
177 who decades before had called up reporters: Marc Fisher and Will Hobson, “Donald Trump Masqueraded as Publicist to Brag About Himself,” Washington Post, May 13, 2016.
178 After the tabloids obsessed: Anne Helen Petersen, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman (New York: Plume, 2017), 136–49.
178 New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz compared her: “Jerry Saltz: How and Why We Started Taking Kim Kardashian Seriously (and What She Teaches Us About the State of Criticism),” Vulture, May 20, 2015.
179 “In the United States”: Boorstin, The Image, 56.
180 “The fragmentation of technology”: Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (New York: Norton, 2019), 159.
180 According to a study by Entertainment Weekly: James Hibberd, “Favorite Shows of Republicans vs. Democrats.” Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 3, 2014.
181 They also really liked reality TV: Josh Katz: “ ‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide,” New York Times, Dec. 27, 2016.
182 an interview with GQ magazine: Drew Magary, “What the Duck?” GQ.com, Dec. 17, 2013.
182 identified by their neutral “TV accents”: J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: Harper, 2016), 79.
183 “All mass culture under monopoly is identical”: Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 95.
183 “a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation”: Patrick Joseph Buchanan, “Culture War Speech: Address to the Republican National Convention,” Aug. 17, 1992.
184 The president of Chick-fil-A denounced gay marriage: “Chick-Fil-A Sandwiches Become a Political Symbol,” Associated Press, July 26, 2012.
184 “go ‘against nature,’ interrupting”: Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (New York: Routledge, 1979), 18.
185 They wailed over a 2016 BBC history cartoon: Sarah Zhang, “A Kerfuffle About Diversity in the Roman Empire,” TheAtlantic.com, Aug. 2, 2017.
185 “that political change follows”: Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (Winchester, UK: Zero, 2017), 40.
186 “Childhood ruined”: crazylegsmurphy, “Ghostbusters 2016: Childhood Ruined,” Reddit, July 10, 2016, https://www.reddit.com/r/ghostbusters/comments/4s4vx3/ghostbusters_2016_childhood_ruined/.
186 To Bannon, embittered online young men: Green, Devil’s Bargain, 146–47.
186 Yiannopoulos rationalized the movement’s ooze: Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” Breitbart, Mar. 29, 2016.
188 Trump ordered printouts: Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 207.
188 “Every time Trump tweeted against amnesty”: Green, Devil’s Bargain, 106.
189 Fox invited Celebrity Apprentice contestant: Outnumbered, Fox News, Oct. 24, 2014.
189 Richard Dawkins’s term for the basic unit of culture: Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
191 “If @realDonaldTrump retweeted me”: Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), on Twitter, Mar. 29, 2014, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/450099934617174017.
196 If he sensed that it might blink off: Philip Rucker and Marc Fisher, “Welcome to Washington’s New Normal: One Trump Drama After Another,” Washington Post, Nov. 22, 2016.
196 The crowd was packed with actors: Aaron Couch and Emmet McDermott, “Donald Trump Campaign Offered Actors $50 to Cheer for Him at Presidential Announcement,” Hollywood Reporter, June 17, 2015.
197 Foreign stereotypes were reliable: Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham, Sex, Lies, and Headlocks: The Real Story of Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment (New York: Crown, 2002), 10.
198 “Each sign in wrestling”: Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Noonday, 1989), 16–17.
198 “The ‘winner’ wasn’t the wrestler whose hand was raised”: Lou Thesz, with Kit Bauman, Hooker (Gallatin, TN: Crowbar, 1995), Kindle edition.
199 At the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner: C-SPAN, Apr. 30, 2011.
199 The fire marshal reported capacity: PolitiFact, “Rachel Maddow Says Trump Exaggerated His Crowd in Phoenix,” July 15, 2015.
201 “designed to replicate the desert sky”: “Floor Plans & Specs,” Phoenix Convention Center website, https://www.phoenixconventioncenter.com/floor-plans-specs.
201 “What makes the circus or the arena”: Barthes, Mythologies, 15.
202 Trump would don reading glasses: Lara Weber, “Donald Trump Likes to Read ‘The Snake’ at His Rallies. The Author’s Family Wants Him to Stop,” Chicago Tribune, Mar. 17, 2016.
202 Journalists at the rallies described attendees: George Saunders, “Trump Days,” The New Yorker, July 11 and 18, 2016, 50–61.
202 Trump knew what wound them up: Josh Dawsey and Nick Miroff, “The Hostile Border Between Trump and the Head of DHS,” Washington Post, May 25, 2018.
203 “Trump was able to take them up to the line”: Jared Yates Sexton, The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2017), 109.
203 The New York Times caught it on video: “Unfiltered Voices from Donald Trump’s Crowds,” TimesVideo, Aug. 3, 2016.
203 That adrenaline would surge toward the journalists: Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History (New York: HarperCollins, 2017), 65.
203 In August, he mimed holding a rifle: Tur, Unbelieveable, 95.
204 “the fundamental metaphor for political discourse”: Postman, Amusing, 126.
205 His two-minute closing ad was a rant: Team Trump, “Donald Trump’s Argument for America,” posted on YouTube, Nov. 6, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8.
205 CNN covered it for weeks: James Poniewozik, “Dear CNN: Sometimes Our Opinions Just Don’t Matter,” Time.com, May 7, 2014.
207 $5.6 billion in free media: Emily Stewart, “Donald Trump Rode $5 Billion in Free Media to the White House,” TheStreet.com, Nov. 20, 2016.
207 “It may not be good for America”: Eliza Collins, “Les Moonves: Trump’s Run Is ‘Damn Good for CBS,’ ” Politico, Feb. 29, 2016.
207 My Times colleague Amy Chozick: Amy Chozick, Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling (New York: Harper, 2018), 131–32.
209 “Trump is fucking crazy”: Michael Grunwald (@mikegrunwald), on Twitter, June 6, 2016.
209 he would request specific camera angles: Tur, Unbelieveable, 26.
209 After TV interviews, he would ask for a playback: Glenn Thrush, “What Chuck Todd Gets About Trump,” Politico, Dec. 30, 2016.
210 “Reagan’s experience as an actor”: Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York: Vintage, 1986), 567.
210 Reagan’s own assessment, to his biographer: Cannon, President Reagan, 32.
211 “My objective was”: Manigault Newman, Unhinged.
211 Reagan had trouble separating movies from reality: Gabler, Life the Movie, 110–11.
211 he had never completely achieved “theory of mind”: Jesse Singal, “Does Donald Trump Have a Fully Developed Theory of Mind?” The Cut, May 16, 2017; David Brooks, “When a Child Is Leading the World,” New York Times, May 15, 2017.
212 “He didn’t trademark it”: Karen Tumulty, “How Donald Trump Came Up with ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” Washington Post, Jan. 18, 2017.
213 “I’ll defend you in court”: Jose A. DelReal, “’Get ’Em Out!’ Racial Tensions Explode at Donald Trump’s Rallies,” Washington Post, March 12, 2016.
213 it was to see nostalgia gone ugly: Donald J. Trump presidential-campaign rally, Sterling Heights, Mich., posted on YouTube, Nov. 6, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAkt18Uw3Tk.
213 “subhuman mongrel”: Manny Fernandez, “Ted Nugent Apologizes for Obama Insult,” New York Times, Feb. 21, 2014.
214 It was Sir Walter: Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York: Harper, 1883), e-book edition.
216 A 2014 poll found a thirty-eight-point gap: Ezra Klein, “GamerGate and the Politicization of Absolutely Everything,” Vox, Nov. 1, 2014.
217 “a nation governed in the Anglo-American tradition”: Michael Patrick Leahy, “Why Coca Cola’s Multicultural ‘America the Beautiful’ Ad Was Offensive,” Breitbart Big Government, Feb. 2, 2014.
218 “I can say Merry Christmas to anyone I want”: 60 Minutes, CBS, Feb. 18, 2018.
220 Trump’s followers didn’t practice: Justin Wm. Moyer, “Trump Says Fans Are ‘Very Passionate’ After Hearing One of Them Allegedly Assaulted Hispanic Man,” Washington Post, Aug. 21, 2015; Astead W. Herndon, “South Boston Brothers Plead Guilty to Brazen Beating,” Boston Globe, May 16, 2016.
221 When the fact-checking outfit PolitiFact: “2015 Lie of the Year,” PolitiFact, Dec. 21, 2015.
222 The last real Republican challenge to Trump: “Transcript of Mitt Romney’s Speech on Donald Trump,” New York Times, Mar. 3, 2016.
227 “Someone unstable”: Barthes, Mythologies, 24.
227 Ta-Nehisi Coates would later call Trump: Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The First White President,” Atlantic, Oct. 2017.
227 Comic Dana Carvey once portrayed: Brian Lowry, “ABC Abruptly Pulls the Plug on ‘The Dana Carvey Show,’ ” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1996.
228 At the 2004 Republican National Convention: John Tierney and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Terminator Talks Tough,” New York Times, Sept. 1, 2004.
228 psychological researchers found: Eric Knowles and Sarah DiMuccio, “How Donald Trump Appeals to Men Secretly Insecure About Their Manhood,” Washington Post, Nov. 29, 2018.
229 “There is an Indiana Jones–style”: Rebecca Traister, “Hillary Clinton vs. Herself,” New York, May 30, 2016.
229 He had taken on Fox News’s Roger Ailes: Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker, “Roger Ailes Is Advising Donald Trump Ahead of Presidential Debates,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 2016.
231 In September 1952, vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon: Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), 36–42.
232 “If anything”: Maggie Haberman, “Donald Trump’s Apology That Wasn’t,” New York Times, Oct. 8, 2016.
234 One psychological study found that Apprentice fans: Bert Gambini, “Reality TV Played Key Role in Taking Trump from ‘Apprentice’ to President,” UBNow (State University of New York at Buffalo), Mar. 5, 2018.
234 But what little polling there was: Anna Giaritelli, “Trump Shuts Down Clinton in Poll of Apprentice Viewers,” Washington Examiner, Feb. 24, 2016; Ryan Lovelace: “Poll: Viewers of The Apprentice Favor Clinton over Trump,” Washington Examiner, June 30, 2016.
Episode 10: THE GORILLA CHANNEL
236 Days after winning the election: Emily Smith and Daniel Halper, “Donald Trump’s Media Summit Was a ‘F——ing Firing Squad,’ ” New York Post, Nov. 21, 2016.
237 “Trump is an avid television viewer”: Steven Perlberg, “How Donald Trump Launched a New Golden Age for Cable TV,” BuzzFeed, Feb. 14, 2017.
238 his executive assistant kept a trove of videotapes: D’Antonio, The Truth About Trump, 153.
239 “In the Huxleyan prophecy”: Postman, Amusing, 155.
240 Author Douglas Rushkoff described Trump: “Why Donald Trump Is a Media Virus,” Digital Trends, Dec. 17, 2016; see also Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture (New York: Ballantine, 1994).
241 “Donald J. Trump is going to be the executive producer”: Cavuto Live, Fox News Channel, Dec. 9, 2016.
242 In her post–White House memoir: Manigault Newman, Unhinged.
242 a table stacked with manila folders: Jonathan Lemire, “What Was in Those Folders at Donald Trump’s Press Conference?” Associated Press, Jan. 13, 2017.
243 “This is central casting”: CNN transcript, Jan. 20, 2017.
244 One obsequious North Korean anchor: Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig, and Karen DeYoung, “ ‘Why Can’t We Just Do It?’: Trump Nearly Upended Summit with Abrupt Changes,” Washington Post, June 14, 2018.
245 Trump later gave Paul Ryan: Mark Leibovich, “This Is the Way Paul Ryan’s Speakership Ends,” New York Times Magazine, Aug. 7, 2018.
246 Jim Dowd, who recalled Trump demanding: The Choice 2016.
247 In a speech to the VFW: Alexander Mallin, “President Trump Defiant on Trade War in Remarks to VFW,” ABCNews.com, July 24, 2018.
247 “Not Stalin’s and Hitler’s skill”: Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1973), 333.
247 “Ideological thinking”: Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 470.
248 An overwhelming flood of information: Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017).
248 “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world”: Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 382.
248 the propagandists in Vladimir Putin’s Russia: Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014).
249 “Truth isn’t truth”: Meet the Press, NBC, Aug. 19, 2018.
249 Trump told his staff: Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Peter Baker, “The President vs. the Presidency,” New York Times, Dec. 10, 2017.
250 When she was booted: Avi Selk and Sara Murray, “The Owner of the Red Hen Explains Why She Asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Leave,” Washington Post, June 25, 2018.
250 “told colleagues he had no idea”: Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan), Twitter, Aug. 25, 2017.
251 “Whenever there was a disagreement”: Manigault Newman, Unhinged.
252 In May 2017, Trump took reporters: Michael Scherer and Zeke J. Miller, “Donald Trump After Hours,” Time, May 22, 2017.
252 He became alarmed during a national security meeting: Woodward, Fear, 102.
252 “Not watching political television”: David Remnick, “Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency,” The New Yorker, Nov. 28, 2016.
252 As CNN carried his first photo op: CNN Newsroom, Jan. 26, 2017.
253 Reportedly, there were three televisions: Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (New York: Holt, 2018), 84–85.
253 “Tonight, I’m going to enjoy watching television”: Lou Dobbs Tonight, Fox Business Network, Oct. 25, 2017.
255 “overtook the president’s fight with CNN”: Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker, “Why Some Inside the White House See Trump’s Media Feud as ‘Winning,’ ” Washington Post, June 30, 2017.
255 a “BREAKING NEWS: TRUMP TWEET” graphic: Allahpundit (@allahpundit), on Twitter, May 30, 2017; “CNBC Now Has a Breaking News Graphic for Trump Tweets,” NewscastStudio, Jan. 27, 2017.
255 “Trump watches TV coverage of him”: Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1), on Twitter, July 24, 2017.
256 When Donny Trump was a little boy: David Smith, “Donald Trump: The Making of a Narcissist,” Guardian, July 16, 2016.
258 “a self-made billionaire”: State of the Union, CNN, Jan. 7, 2018.
259 “Am I like a baby to you?” Green, Devil’s Bargain, 201.
259 “Rudy, you’re a baby!” Woodward, Fear, 37.
260 “Two Minutes Hate”: George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York: Harcourt, 1949), 13.
260 he had never cried: The Brody File, Christian Broadcasting Network, Jan. 19, 2016.
260 “Womp womp”: The Story with Martha MacCallum, Fox News, June 19, 2018.
261 “their brilliant and witty praise”: Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 330.
261 Trump started holding his rallies again: Charles Homans, “The Post-Campaign Campaign of Donald Trump,” New York Times Magazine, Apr. 15, 2018, 24.
263 At the center of the chaos, invariably, was TV: Wolff, Fire and Fury, 22, 114, 159, 197, 247.
263 “Wow, this extract from Wolff’s book”: Ben Ward (@pixelatedboat), on Twitter, Jan. 4, 2018.
264 “Think what your brain would be like”: Woodward, Fear, 299.
264 He directed his secretary of state: Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), on Twitter, Aug. 22, 2018.
265 “He basically has a desk in the place”: Robert Costa, Sarah Ellison, and Josh Dawsey, “Hannity’s Rising Role in Trump’s World,” Washington Post, Apr. 17, 2018.
265 “the great Lou Dobbs”: Donald Trump, interview by hill.tv, Sept. 19, 2018.
265 “look like a loser”: Fox & Friends, Fox News, Dec. 19, 2018.
265 thousands of dollars’ worth of dental work: Joel Pavelski, “The Great White House Reporter Glow-Up,” GQ.com, Oct. 1, 2018.
265 It was real that critics, lobbyists, and corporations: Ashley Rodriguez, “Lobbyists Have a New Tactic for Wielding Influence in Washington—Buying Ads on Trump’s Favorite TV Shows,” Quartz, Feb. 6, 2017.
265 White House officials would go on TV: Ashley Parker and Robert Costa, “ ‘Everyone Tunes In’: Inside Trump’s Obsession with Cable TV,” Washington Post, Apr. 23, 2017.
265 When Trump took a shine: Jacqueline Thomsen, “White House Has Aides Go on Pirro’s Show Every Week Knowing Trump Watches: Report,” The Hill, Apr. 5, 2018, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/381910-white-house-has-aides-go-on-pirro-every-week-knowing-trump-watches.
266 Ann Coulter, conservative TV’s perpetual font: The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton, Fox News, June 17, 2018.
266 “One of the ways to influence the president”: Astead W. Herndon, “What’s Trump’s Think Tank? Try Internet Message Boards,” Boston Globe, Aug. 29, 2017.
266 Maryland representative Elijah Cummings, seeking a meeting: April Ryan, American Urban Radio Network, Jan. 25, 2017.
266 An associate of his reported: Jacqueline Alemany, “Trump Asked Source to Go on TV to Ask Him to Fire Robert Mueller,” CBSNews
.com, Apr. 13, 2018.
267 What bothered Trump was his meekness: Jeremy W. Peters and Susan Chira, “Court Pick Steals a Page from Trump’s Playbook on White Male Anger,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 2018.
Finale: THE IDEA OF A PRESIDENT
269 The Trump White House cut back: Anastasia Day, “How the White House Garden Became a Political Football,” Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2018.
270 “He gets out, walks two feet”: Rick Reilly, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump (New York: Hachette, 2019), Kindle edition.
270 alleged that he had not used condoms: Gail Collins, “Trump’s Birth Control Problems,” New York Times, Jan. 31, 2018; Karen McDougal, interview by Anderson Cooper, CNN, March 22, 2018.
271 “pee tape”: Naomi Fry, “When We Think About the Pee Tape,” Newyorker.com, Apr. 18, 2018.
271 Tom Arnold, the D-list actor: James Poniewozik, “Tom Arnold’s ‘Trump Tapes’ Blows Smoke with No Smoking Gun,” New York Times, Sept. 17, 2018.
271 The artist Jonathan Sun: NBC News, Jan. 11, 2017; tweet from @tinycarebot to the author, Sept. 8, 2018.
271 A fifty-three-year-old-man living on a pig farm: Sam Dolnick, “The Man Who Knew Too Little,” New York Times, Mar. 11, 2018.
272 In The Making of the President 1960: Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (1961; repr. New York: Harper, 2009), 290.
272 George W. S. Trow anticipated Trump’s relativistic arguments: Trow, Within the Context, 88.
275 a fan of The Wire: Michael D. Shear, “Obama’s TV Picks: Anything Edgy, with Hints of Reality,” New York Times, Dec. 29, 2013; Katie Zezima, “Presidents Have Favorite Television Shows, Too. Here’s a List,” Washington Post, June 27, 2014.
277 The hall, with its “Audio-Animatronic” semblables: Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Vintage, 2007), 578–81.
277 Today, the show begins: “FULL updated Hall of Presidents 2017 with Donald Trump at Walt Disney World,” Inside the Magic, posted on YouTube, Dec. 19, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkxOdzVbrrs.
278 The previous film: “The Hall of Presidents,” Attractions Magazine, posted on YouTube, Jan. 16, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMn83d4tQp8.
279 “The public is meant to admire the perfection of the fake”: Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, 44.