The Most Consequential TV Show in History

McKay Coppins: “In a CNN interview shortly after launching his presidential campaign in 2015, Donald Trump told a skeptical Jake Tapper that he was ‘in it to win it’ and boasted, ‘I’m giving up hundreds of millions of dollars to do this. I’m giving up a prime-time television show.'”

“In fact, according to a new book, Trump wasn’t quite as confident as he claimed. For at least six months after he entered the race, he insisted on keeping the set for The Apprentice intact on the 14th floor of Trump Tower—if the whole presidential-campaign thing didn’t work out, at least it would generate good publicity for the next season of The Celebrity Apprentice. ‘There was a cognizant decision to leave the boardroom,’ Trump’s son Eric told the book’s author, ‘and there was a possibility of it coming back.’ When the set was eventually torn down, campaign staffers took over the floor.”

“This almost-too-perfect metaphor for the melding of Trump’s reality-TV and political careers appears in Apprentice in Wonderland, by the entertainment journalist Ramin Setoodeh. The book comes out later this month; I obtained an early copy.”