On This Day In 2018
"Apprentice” insider reveals Trump’s competence was faked
Trump’s role of a lifetime. He may have had his…flaws…as president, but The Donald was a success as a game show host. For 14 seasons, “The Apprentice” ranked among the top shows on TV. It offered Trump the veneer of competency.
Supposedly viewers could learn how to be a business genius by observing how Trump picked winners and losers among the contestants. “You’re fired!” he enjoyed telling them.
But OTDI 2018, Jonathan Braun, who was an editor on the show, revealed that he and other staffers often had to “reverse engineer” episodes because Trump fired people randomly without rationale. Unless they fixed things, the show would make no sense, as some of the best candidates were being kept on or axed for no discernible reason.
“Most of us knew he was a fake,” Braun told @praddenkeefe in The New Yorker. “He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.”
With vigorous post-production work, “The Apprentice” was made to look logical. Apparently Trump also needed Braun for his time in the White House. Left alone, without Hollywood editors, one season of Trump’s show in Washington was enough.
o The New Yorker has the expose: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/how-mark-burnett-resurrected-donald-trump-as-an-icon-of-american-success
o The Wrap reports on the “reverse engineering” of The Apprentice here: www.thewrap.com/apprentice-staffers-had-to-reverse-engineer-episodes-because-unprepared-trump-would-fire-contestants-on-a-whim/
o Newsweek covers The Apprentice ratings here: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-apprentice-nbc-failed-lineup-ratings-debra-messing-1457237
