The New Yorker:

For months, it felt easier to avoid watching Donald Trump on television. It was like sniffing spoiled milk: you didn’t need a sip to know it was bad. Then, in June, the President held the first meeting of his complete Cabinet. It aired live, as Trump’s early campaign rallies had, in full and without commentary, on CNN.

Wearing a striped tie that rhymed with the flag behind him, Trump sat at a massive table, smiling. “Mike?” Trump said, and Vice-President Pence took the cue. “Thank you, Mr. President. It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as Vice-President to a President who is keeping his word to the American people.” As cameras clicked like cicadas, each appointee offered up an homage; Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, thanked Trump for the “opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda.”

Many compared the spectacle to something out of North Korea. But it was also a near-replica of a production closer to home. It’s become a wearying, ugly observation, a media truism at once superficial and deep: if “The Apprentice” didn’t get Trump elected, it is surely what made him electable. Over fourteen seasons, the television producer Mark Burnett helped turn the Donald Trump of the late nineties—the disgraced huckster who had trashed Atlantic City; a tabloid pariah to whom no bank would lend—into a titan of industry, nationally admired for being, in his own words, “the highest-quality brand.” And here we were again, at the boardroom table, listening to the compliments to the boss, suspended in that eerie, unstable blend of improvisation and scripting. It was enough to make a television critic nostalgic.

As it happens, most episodes of Trump on “The Apprentice” are curiously hard to find: they’re not available to stream or download. Only first-season DVDs are for sale, legally, online—and only used ones. The show is not at the Paley Center for Media’s research library, either. (M-G-M, which owns the rights, declined to comment.) To watch, you’ll need occult methods. But at the Paley you can catch something nearly as illuminating: a video of a panel discussion about the show, from 2004, following its first season. It was filmed the day after “The Apprentice” lost the Emmy for best reality show to “The Amazing Race.” The moderator is the “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, who, a year later, played Trump’s wingman in the pussy-grabbing tape.

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