The best way to beat a Reality TV Show is to put on a better Reality TV Show.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo saw this opportunity months ago; he put Trump’s stiff and rambling virus briefs to shame with his own version of reality TV.
He had done his homework.
His show was complete with a loving brother, his dog, his daughters and their boyfriends, folksy homilies about Dad(Mario), Mom (Matilda), hero health care workers, dying bus drivers, heroic doctors and nurses, and the trials of public service.
Oh yes, and also the truth about the virus and how dangerous it was. People sensed that Cuomo was telling the truth about the virus and that President Trump wasn’t.
If Cuomo had that show running now and brought it to a presidential campaign, he’d win in a landslide. The tears that ran down his face on live TV when his Brother Chris caught the virus were priceless.
Now, there’s only one hot reality TV show obsessing people, it’s called the 2020 Presidential Election.
Trump’s great strength – an understanding of media and culture – is a pronounced weakness of most politicians, except for Kamala Harris.
She is the first candidate in a presidential election to bounce off an airplane in Converse sneakers(Chuck Taylor), which went viral and then talk about working out in the gym to the music of Mary Blige.
Trump was flummoxed, he didn’t even know how to ridicule her. You have to keep moving to keep up with culture. He’s getting up there.
Trump is the first President or Presidential candidate to grasp that popular culture is now one of the most powerful forces in American life and has increasingly fused with reality.
More and more, they are the same thing.
On reality tv, there are no penalties for cruelty, lying, callousness, or greed; in fact, all three often bring great rewards to the contestants who practice them.
Trump has been a contestant, not a leader, from his first day in office. He pays much more attention to ratings than to pandemics.
He spends every waking hour scheming and plotting to stay on the island.
In that sense, Biden is a fossil. But Trump keeps getting himself into trouble; he has no boundaries, and thus, takes no responsibility and denies any consequences.
He has gone too far, elevating Biden’s old fuddiness into a great virtue. Against a “normal” politician, Biden would look out of touch and worn out. Against Trump, he seems heroic and decent.
Though his erratic and divisive behavior, Trump has sparked a comeback for dignity, civility, and compassion as virtues all by himself.
Joe Biden is a straight and normal politician, not a TV personality. Trump is firing up his reality TV persona and taking us over the moon with it. So far, it is failing him.
To win, Joe Biden will have to do it the old fashioned way. So far, that is working. Since Donald Trump listens to no one and is convinced he is a genius, he is on a straight path to fly into the mountain.
You cannot understand the pull and power of Donald Trump or this election without considering reality television, from which he sprang like another Kardashian.
Reality TV performers have all kinds of options conventional politicians don’t have. That’s the tension, if there is any, in this race. If Trump weren’t quite so crazy and so foolish, he could just possibly have run away with it. He did for nearly four years.
The first thing I was taught as a TV news producer came from my friend Eric, who worked as a news director at local TV news for a CBS affiliate.
“There’s a reason why local TV shows always begin with a murder, a fire, or a building collapse,” he said.
“That is because people are drawn to fear, tragedy, and violence, not empathy, charity, and normalcy. Never forget that, and you will do well.” We are not here to inform, he said, but to shock and entertain. Fear is the biggest ratings builder and profit-maker of all.
In fact, most TV news has become a form of high-concept reality TV, just like our presidential campaign is, a provocative and tawdry drama that tens of millions of people love and claim to hate but are addicted to.
I did not forget what Eric said, but I didn’t want to do it, so I didn’t do well and went off to write books. Every time I watch Donald Trump at one of his press conferences or campaign rallies, I remember Eric’s lesson.
Kim Kardashian’s many cultish followers get it, and they love it.
Reality TV is yet another thing that separates the elites from the masses but is one of the keys to grasping Donald Trump’s presidency and his re-election campaign.
Asked by a television interviewer what his plans were for his second term, he looked at the ground and said, “oh, we’re going to do more good stuff, beautiful things.”
The interviewer nodded, as if this was a coherent sentence.
Reality television is widely considered mindless entertainment – no Emmy’s – but it gives many millions of Americans a release from their worrisome and ordinary lives.
Reality shows are popular because people like to watch other ordinary people who are successful.
And you can’t get more successful than a reality TV star who becomes President of the United States. Another big poke in the eye for the snobs that have looked down on his fans and followers for decades.
That is the song that Donald Trump sings so loudly and often: Look at me, I am one of you. I am Elmer Fudd; I have a mansion and a yacht.
I often see the horror and shock or people who never watch reality shows and have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on at the highest levels of our country when someone like Trump gets to run it.
All over the country, people are asking, “how did this happen?” I think I might be able to help a little.
Donald Trump sees the Presidency as a reality TV show in every sense of the term.
If you have ever watched a reality TV show, you may recognize President Trump’s character and the nature and excitement of howling, cheering, and even bloodthirsty mobs.
Reality TV villains say awful things and are easy to hate, but they are also easy to love because the audience knows they aren’t really villains, and they ought not to be taken literally. They are acting, even if they are not actors.
They just want to win and get some money.
They reflect us as we are deep down, not as we have to be in life.
They say all kinds of crazy things, but they don’t really mean them; it’s just something they have to do to get on the show.
Reality TV is essentially a television program where real people are continuously filmed, largely unscripted, and designed to be provocative and entertaining rather than informative or serious.
How does one stand out in a reality tv show? By being outrageous, lying, or cheating, or punching your wife’s new boyfriend on the nose.
We saw a good and very recent example of how Donald Trump works Saturday:
At his maskless campaign rally in Nevada, Trump warned that it was time for him to be no more Mr. Nice Guy, that he was prepared to be “really vicious” in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.
Stay tuned for the next few episodes. If you think this is bad, come back next Tuesday!
In a rage over a new Biden ad about his disparaging of U.S. Military personnel, Trump came to the rally with a stream of ugly insults all ready to go. “Pathetic Joe. He’s a pathetic human being to allow that to happen.”
But you know the good part, asked Trump as the crowd roared? “Once I saw that ad, I don’t have to be nice anymore.”
That’s the good part, I wondered?
It was classic Trump doublespeak.
I must have missed the nice guy phase of the campaign or his first term; I remember that Trump called Biden stupid, senile, and said he was under medication for dementia.
I guess the next level is throwing tomatoes at him during the debates. I laughed at this idea of Trump abandoning niceness.
Trump was never nice before, and he isn’t going to be nice now. But he just turned his nastiness into a virtue, not a liability, a license, and defense.
In the new narrative, Biden caused him to be vicious; he had nothing to do with it.
It’s a neat hat trick, and he does it instinctively.
His embrace of culture and it’s very different rules and traditions, and media, with its ravenous appetite for conflict, sets him apart from almost every other politician and leaves most of them in the dust, sputtering in rage and bewilderment.
If you get to see the tape of that Nevada speech, you might notice, as I did, that the crowds were alternately cheering and laughing at Trump’s remarks.
They weren’t laughing at him, they were laughing with him, as an audience might at a reality TV show taping studio, delighted to see the guests wrestling on the floor.
The whole thing was funny, like Emmett Kelly at the circus. They came to hear fighting words, and they got what they came for, Air Force One his grand backdrop.
They were entertained more than informed, as they expected.
They could care less if Trump is going to be nice to Biden or not, or if he ever was. He is giving them a good and entertaining show. He is saying “nuts” to the system.
So many journalists missed Trump’s rise in 2016 because few of them ever watch reality TV shows, they couldn’t connect the dots.
Can you imagine those stuff pots on CNN or Fox News or Hilary Clinton watching Love Island U.K? Trump reportedly watches it all the time and knows every episode by heart.
To his fans, it’s not mean when Trump talks about being vicious. It’s like streaming Fort Apache!
It’s exciting; it’s about time he told them off, they think, excited. It’s just like watching W.C. Field kick Baby Leroy in the butt. I laughed almost until I choked. Good for him, I thought, the obnoxious little brat deserved it.
It’s striking how many reality TV shows are really about revenge.
Trump’s fans get a show every day on numerous channels, all for free. Don’t forget to see us on Twitter.
In Nevada, Trump was once again shocking, outrageous, emotional, threatening, the hallmarks of a wildly successful television programming genre that documents supposedly real-life situations that are actually carefully programmed.
Reality television often stars individual people with distinct personalities who are not professional actors. Trump was and is a natural.
And he gave his fans a good show, a chance to boo the reporters, promise to lock his opponents up, accuse Obama of crimes against the state, forego maks, and give the thumb to those pissy scientists who are always telling them how to live their lives and offering bad news.
If you live a dull and ordinary life, Trump will crank you up and make you feel like a movie star.
Like actors in Greek Drama, reality shows aim to show how ordinary people behave in everyday life or in dramatic situations created by program makers intended to represent everyday life.
A simpler way to put it is that reality shows are fantasized and created versions meant to connect with ordinary people who would never be on television, but who can see themselves in it.
These ordinary people find wealth, success, even love.
The winners are often devious, dishonest, and ruthless. That’s how they win. they become stars and celebrities in their own right.
Their audiences are overwhelmingly white, blue-collar, and working class.
You will find very few elite members in those shows, or the audience, or watching at home. Television revenue is about total numbers, not sophistication or education.
There are definitely cultish elements to many of these broadcasts – the Bachelor, the Kardasians, Trump himself. But most are about emotion and the struggle of the little guy or woman to breakthrough.
In a sense, Donald Trump is every man or woman who wanted to tell his teacher to piss off or his or her boss to fuck off or corrupt congresspeople to climb up a tree.
He is every man or woman who is sick of taxes, lost his job, whose downtown is shuttered, his father has been unemployed for 30 years because his factory closed up and went to Mexico.
When he first took office, Trump tried to play the Washington game by hiring veteran bureaucrats and respected Washington or business figures like Rex Tillerson or John Kelly or James Mattis.
He dropped that posture and returned to his roots – there is only one big star on most successful reality shows, and they do what they want and say what they want, and thrive by being themselves.
There is nothing freer or more liberating than a one-man show.
That is the dream of the ordinary man – no limits or restraints.
Reality shows often feature contrived contests and competitions: The Real World, Survivor, The Bachelor, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, American Idol, The Great British Baking Show, An American Family, What Would You Do?
Donald Trump’s Apprentice was never as popular as any of those shows listed above. Still, it was popular enough to launch his campaign for the presidency, which was initially supported by hundreds of thousands of star-struck fans.
That’s a lot more than most U.S. Senators have.
Politics is often about recognition as anything else; it’s very hard to get people to pay attention to you in America. And it’s very expensive.
Another revealing example of how the Reality Presidency works is Trump’s stunning interview with Bob Woodward, in which he revealed he was lying about the virus all the time, he knew as early as February that it was ten times more dangerous than the flu, he was also revealing something more.
This was an incredibly stupid thing to do to the pundits and pols, knowing Woodward’s past penchant for skewering Presidents.
To his fans, it was just another bold move that didn’t quite pan out. And who cares what Bob Woodward says. Trump, his followers always say he says the wrong things but does the right things.
As Woodward often does, he was just playing Trump, who played the tell-it-like-it-is, fear nothing, obnoxious, defiant, ball-busting star of the White House, the in your face President, happily tormenting the swells and windbags every chance he got.
What does he care about what people say about him? Political correctness is for pussies.
It wasn’t the President of the United States who was lying or shirking his responsibility to the people; it was just Donald Trump, the star of all TV, the master of the media, doing his thing, what he always does. So move on and chill, don’t forget your tickets to the next show.
No masks necessary and hug everybody if you wish.
And how amazing, a reality tv start getting interviewed by Bob Woodward.
If Bob Woodward, who everybody sees coming, could take him down like that, it does give me pause to imagine what Trump must be like when negotiating with someone like Alexandr Putin or Kim Il-Sung.
Nothing to get upset about, any more than people got upset at Simon Cowell for brutally critiquing those dreadful young singers on American Idol and shaming them off the show. It’s just what he does.
As Trump told a puzzled Sean Hannity with a shrug, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s all part of the show. That is a new way for many Americans to think about the Presidency.
For his fans, it’s just another chapter in the endless drama.
It was just a TV show, a performance. Anything goes. Ask Jerry Springer, who could get himself into the United States Senate in a flash if he wasn’t so rich. Already.
In this arena, Biden is outclassed and out of his league. He is about as sordid and provocative as a doormat.
The problem for Trump is that the Presidency isn’t a 12-times a year show, and performing is not the same as governing. When people get into deep trouble, they expect their President to do something about it, and not on the tube but in real life.
When you are President, it really does still matter what you do, not just what you say or what Fox News says.
People can’t just flick off their TV and go to bed and move on. Pandemics and race riots are very real and very disturbing, and very urgent. Trump does not seem to know that. People die, go broke, lose homes.
The other problem is that there simply are not enough reality TV watchers or Trump supporters to win an election by themselves. Trump doesn’t seem to know this either.
And there’s another problem. Americans are getting sick of reality TV, just as many people are getting sick of Trump:
A new Morning Consult/The Hollywood Reporter survey shows that while U.S. adults continue to watch reality programming, their feelings on the genre are souring, with women, in particular, having unfavorable views of certain shows explicitly marketed to them.
A 48 percent plurality of the poll’s 2,200 respondents said they have an unfavorable view of reality television, the most among all the survey genres.
Who watches reality TV?
According to Nielsen, nearly 39 percent of Americans watch some form of TV, from watching celebrities eat bugs in the jungle or watching socialities sip wine in Chelsea in Manhattan.
Don’t forget the Millenials dancing and partying in Magaluf.
That is not enough people to win an election.
It’s almost as if he sees his followers as a reality TV audience; he is addicted to their cheers and unwavering support. They feed him adoration – his fuel – just as he feeds them the attention, appreciation, and promises them the support that they have never received in their lives.
Trump had months to define Biden as brain dead and just another liberal politician.
He didn’t do it because he is so busy stirring controversies and throwing fishes into his seal’s pool. There must be drama and controversy and betrayal and chaos in every show on a reality TV show.
Trump clearly carried that instinct over to the White House. But again, he has overplayed his hand. There are real consequences for people when a President screws up; there are none when a reality tv does.
His dumping openly on soldiers who go to war and his admission of lying and his refusal to woo almost any people outside of his fans is hurting him, even if the only way is distraction and chaos.
He spends precious days defending himself.
And he just keeps getting worse, not better. Reality tv stars don’t need discipline or focus. Presidents seem to.
At this point, the script calls for me to say “be very afraid,” there’s a lot of time left, he could still win. It is nice to cover your ass in that way; I suppose real pundits’ job could depend on it.
I can say with pride that I don’t generally write to cover my ass; it seems cowardly to me.
Of course, he could still win. Anything can happen. Trump is running one of the worst political campaigns in the modern history of the Republic (I haven’t read about them all.)
Here’s my truth – nobody else’s. Donald Trump is simply not capable of doing what he urgently needs to do to win this election. He is proving that every day. Something in him is broken, he is dysfunctional politically.
He became addicted to himself and his own loud voice. He did not even bother to try to win over the few people left in America with no strong feelings about him.
As I said more than once, he dug a hundred holes in the ground and stepped into every one of them. As a reality TV show, this one might have topped them all; it has all the elements.
As a political campaign, it is a stinkbomb, almost everyone with their eyes and nose open can see it and smell it.
