Thread by @adamfelber

This thread is a must-read. Though it’ll be unsurprising to anyone who lived near NYC in the 80’s and 90’s.

Quick addendum: Several years ago, I worked as a creative consultant for “The Apprentice.” (1/a few)

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1084539186571558914

I have no startling revelations to reveal. It was 2005, I’d just moved to LA, I was broke, and the job presented itself.

[Wait - a friend I’m writing with just arrived. I’ll finish this later. Stay tuned!] (2/ a couple more, I promise!)

Okay. I didn’t work with Donald. I worked with the team preparing to head to NY for the next season.

Good, smart people. Most had already worked on the show, and with Trump, for a couple of years.

They did not hate the guy. But...

... they also didn’t take him seriously. He was sort of an object of fun. Everybody did an impression of him.

To me - and to just about everybody, I think - he was kind of a kitschy figure. A cartoon from the 80’s who was willing to play himself on reality TV.

Of course, his involvement with the show was pretty minimal. His job was to come in once a week, watch a video that had been prepped for him, and render his judgement in the fake boardroom.

A super fun job, come to think of it. And I bet that’s how he pictured being president.

Here’s the thing. Did anyone think that creating “TV Trump,” a “mogul” who watched a bunch of idiots make murals for PlayStation or run lemonade stands or whatever- and judge them seriously - was dangerous?

Of course not. But it was.

Straight up - without The Apprentice, there is no President Trump. So the way I look at it, I am partly responsible for destroying the world. Um... sorry!

The thing is, nobody understood the way Reality TV was being understood in America.

From the production side, it’s very different: You shoot a mountain of footage, and producers and editors spend countless hours sorting through and turning random shit into coherent stories.

There’s a lot of cheating going on in the edit bays. Once you think you know what the “story” is, you have to bend things around a lot to tell that story. Because the story barely exists in reality.

Lemme explain: can you tell a compelling story of your day today?

Probably not. But give a talented editor the raw footage of your day, and you’d be amazed. They’ll make it look like you lived through fucking “Pride and Prejudice” today. I’m not exaggerating.

Let ‘em know how your “story of today” ends, and they’ll work magic.

That’s where Trump came in.

See, Trump didn’t have to be right. Ever. That’s not how it works. He came in and looked at stuff, and fake “fired” someone with confidence.

He’s the endpoint. He literally couldn’t look anything but competent, because the story was then written to make his ending look good.

So yeah, he was useful. And to be useful, he had to be portrayed as a Success. The Tycoon.

Even if my coworkers knew that America didn’t get that this was all just an entertainment product, that they believed in the Trump character, that didn’t worry anyone. Why would it?

This had never happened before. It will likely never happen again. But in pursuit of creating a diverting prime time show, Hollywood - liberal Hollywood - got America to believe in a character that didn’t really exist.

And then that character jumped out of the screen and destroyed the world. The End.

So... Um... sorry!