Setoodeh wondered if Trump had “momentarily forgotten that President Joe Biden has barred him from receiving the customary ex-presidential intelligence briefings.”
But it didn’t matter. Trump never did get up and almost immediately forgot about “the whole thing with the Afghanistan.” Pointing to the TV screen, he told Setoodeh to play another old clip from “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Welcome to the mad world of “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass.” Setoodeh, the co-editor in chief of Variety, casts Trump not as a failure of our political system but as a Frankenstein monster manufactured by reality TV. Burnett, the avaricious producer of “The Apprentice,” “created the Donald Trump myth, programmed him, fed his ego, and covered up all of his flaws with the magic of Hollywood’s best editors,” Setoodeh writes.
If that’s not a particularly original thesis, it’s certainly a convincing one in this witty, dogged and often sobering analysis of the “Apprentice” franchise and Trump, who just turned 78.
Any other former president would surely be eager to wax eloquent about his tenure as leader of the free world. But Setoodeh says that Trump “just wants me to understand how he made great TV.” Every time they meet, he asks, “Do you think I would have been president without ‘The Apprentice’?”
“Apprentice in Wonderland,” which will be released Tuesday, is full of the usual Trumpy inanities: Trump insists he won both presidential elections “by a lot!” Trump thinks that “Will & Grace” actress Debra Messing is “a nasty person.” Trump wanted $6 million per episode for “The Apprentice” to match the combined salaries paid to the cast of “Friends.” Trump believes that his Hollywood haters secretly voted for him. Sure, whatever.
I can’t say I was always gripped by Setoodeh’s consideration of individual seasons of “The Apprentice” or every anecdote about Martha Stewart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Omarosa Manigault and various contestants who were hired or fired.
But what’s fascinating here is how effectively Setoodeh demonstrates that Trump is still drunk on celebrity nostalgia. “In our days together,” he writes, “Trump is happiest when he talks about ‘The Apprentice’ and crankiest when he relives his years as the commander in chief.” Funnily enough, most Americans feel that way, too.
Drifting “in a web of half-truths and empty boasts,” the once and possibly future president of the United States remains fixated on his television success two decades ago. It’s a world of gilded glamour covered in dust. “Trump Tower,” Setoodeh says, “feels like Grey Gardens without the cats.”
“On some days,” he writes, “I have the feeling he has no idea whom he’s even talking to.” Trump’s memory of what happened in the Oval Office is muddled, but he can recall the details of every battle on “The Apprentice.” His face flushed with excitement, “he sounds like a retired high school football coach, lounging in a diner.”
Among the book’s most pathetic scenes — and there are many — is one that shows Trump standing before “his wall of egotism,” gazing upon a framed page of his Nielsen ratings from “The Apprentice.” In the wistful voice of Miss Havisham, the former resident of the White House says, “This is my whole life.”
“He doesn’t dare touch this valuable document, something that seems to carry as much value to him as the U.S. Constitution, if not more.” And yet, even as they’re both looking directly at the Nielsen stats, Trump exaggerates the number of viewers as reflexively as he lies about his vote counts.
Over the course of six interviews, Setoodeh sometimes grew weary. He even began to sympathize with Sean Spicer and other paid Trump sycophants who had to endure the man’s endless delusions.
But there was no getting away. And so the two of them watched one video clip after another. “He’s as entertained as a child discovering ‘Star Wars’ for the first time,” Setoodeh writes. “There is something about talking about ‘The Apprentice’ that soothes him, like a calming chest balm applied to a patient with pneumonia.”
The former president was thrilled by the prospect of a book about his reality TV glory days. Assuming it would be flattering, he even offered to promote the book and sell it at rallies. “It’s going to be a very big smash,” Trump predicted. “I’ve never had a book that wasn’t.”
In the end, “Apprentice in Wonderland” does the impossible: It makes me pity Donald Trump.
“We’ve gone down the rabbit hole with Trump,” Setoodeh concludes. “He’s eaten up everything, and grown massive in the process, all while we’ve shrunk into his playthings. And, unlike Alice, we can’t easily wake up from this nightmare.”
This article was excerpted from our free Book Club newsletter. To subscribe, visit wapo.st/booknewsletter.
How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass
