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How Trump Got So Damn Good at TV
Television critic James Poniewozik’s new book ‘Audience of One’ examines how ‘The Apprentice’ and Fox News gave us President Trump
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, many political journalists looked for answers to the question of “how did we get here?” in Rust Belt towns, taking the pulse of white, working-class Trump voters. But for New York Times television critic James Poniewozik, the answer was to be found on TV, where Donald Trump had been a talk show guest, reality TV star, and current events gadfly before ever entering politics.
In his illuminating new book, Audience of One: Television, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Illusion, Poniewozik argues that we cannot even begin to understand the 45th president without looking at the cultural forces that had propelled him to the White House: “This is an applied piece of television criticism, applied to a ‘show’ that even if you didn’t realize it, was unfolding in American media for four decades,” he says.
On a recent morning, I sat with Poniewozik in the backyard of his Brooklyn home to discuss how popular culture cannot be understood without recourse to politics, and vice versa: “There’s still the argument of ‘should arts criticism be that political?’” he says. “At this point, I kind of feel like if somebody doesn’t realize once the guy from The Apprentice got elected president, that TV is deeply political and needs to be understood in that sense, then there’s nothing I can do for them.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
GEN: Do you look back at the Donald Trump of the 1970s and ’80s, when he was being interviewed by Tom Brokaw and appearing on Donahue, and see a clear path from B-list celebrity to the presidency?
James Poniewozik: One thing I’m very adamant about is that this is not a book that is trying to figure out the kernel of the “real” Donald Trump. For my purposes, what I am talking about is the publicly performed character of “Donald Trump,” which has evolved over the years, and who may be the most public, on-exhibition American who has…
