Chapter 2: Communicating for the show

Trump and the White House reality show

Scene 1: Donald Trump raises his fist and shouts “Fight, fight, fight!” seconds after being the target of an assassination attempt.

Scene 2: The U.S. president and vice president have a tense discussion with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office, and Trump’s first reaction is to say that the situation will be great for television.

Scene 3: The U.S. president attends a NASCAR race and first flies over the track in his plane and then drives around it in his presidential car.

An entire book could be written with more examples like these. Trump cemented his popularity through television. The Apprentice, the reality show he starred in for 14 seasons until 2015, established his image and essentially became his presidential pre-campaign before the 2016 elections. That’s why he’s obsessed with ratings and why he knows how to exploit every opportunity to attract attention and make his messages go viral. Every public appearance is seen as a potential show.

In his second term, the U.S. president has upped the showmanship. Along with the “flood the zone” strategy, which we analyzed in the first installment of the Trump Observatory, he dominates the minds and hearts of a large portion of the population through carefully designed, almost theatrical performances. Each one is a display of his power and heroism.

The mediatization of politics is nothing new. It has been on the rise since Arthur Miller, in his 2001 lecture “On Politics and the Art of Acting,” warned that we are surrounded by so many deliberately falsified or exaggerated performances that it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify reality. But Trump has now gone a step further. In his first 90 days in office, he has held an average of at least five media-heavy events per week to position his messages and political narrative.

In his famous book, Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind, Chris Salmon warned that new information systems help to blur the lines between reality and fiction. The art of governing is transformed into the art of staging. Reality is no longer important, and its place is taken by communication in order to capture attention and gain support. It doesn’t matter how you govern or the actual results; what matters is the story that you tell. Master the narrative in order to master politics.

Below, we analyze in greater detail, and with examples, six ways in which Trump and his team apply the strategy of theatricality:

1. Meetings and events with celebrities

Since Trump returned to the White House, celebrities of all kinds have paraded through his office. The president has also attended some of the most popular sporting events in the United States. For example, he was the first president to attend a Super Bowl live. Trump knows that his mere presence at these types of events guarantees virality on social media and airtime on the news. It also helps him connect with the less politicized electorate.

Examples:

2. Signing laws and executive orders

Government measures cease to be mere public policies and become a spectacle with Trump as the protagonist. When he signed the decree eliminating the Department of Education, he did so at a school desk surrounded by students in a makeshift classroom. To sign an order against the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, he surrounded himself with female athletes. To formalize the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, he took advantage of Air Force One’s flight over the area and had the plane’s captain announce it over the sound system. The president’s own signature and the markers he uses take on a central role in a kind of new graphological populism.

And the content of what he signs is often not really important. The president publicly warns of a major threat that he is about to correct with the approved measure. He presents himself as the hero, even if days later he himself may have to rectify, or a judge might block it. This has already happened with the “Liberation Day” tariffs and various executive orders.

Examples:

3. Receiving foreign leaders

Twelve foreign leaders have visited Trump at the White House, and the same script is repeated with each one. They are shown entering the White House, then conversing with Trump in the Oval Office, and finally holding a press conference. The goal is to show his power; they come from outside to pay tribute to him. As Philippe Moreau writes, any leader who enters his office is entering a television set. The only one who didn’t fully assume his role was Zelenskiy. He didn’t bow his head as intended, and the result was his expulsion from the White House.

Examples:

4. Cabinet meetings

The meetings with members of his administration are not intended to analyze the country’s situation and make decisions. Instead, they are also television segments highlighting the administration’s achievements and how the secretaries of the various departments are working to advance the leader’s agenda. In a recent meeting, Trump asked each of them to publicly account to the public for what they had done in their first months in office.

Examples:

5. Trips

Trump tends to travel between the White House and his Mar-a-Lago residence; these are his preferred locations. However, he made two trips early in his administration to cement his hero-savior narrative. He went to California days after the deadly wildfires in Los Angeles and to the areas in North Carolina hit by Hurricane Helene in September. In both places, he repeated the same message: the Biden administration had abandoned its citizens, but that would change with him in charge. One of his measures wasted 2,200 gallons of water in California. But the important thing isn’t the result; it’s the show.

Examples:

6. The supporting actors

Trump is undoubtedly the star of the show, but he’s not the only actor in it. He’s made sure of this by making cabinet selections that take each member’s ability to play their role into account. It’s no surprise, then, that several of them have considerable television experience.

His vice president, JD Vance, became famous for an autobiographical book that was later adapted for the big screen via Netflix. In April, an event was held at the White House to celebrate his mother’s 10 years of staying sober.

Another figure who has stood out for her theatrical abilities is Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. She recorded herself setting trash on fire with a flamethrower, toured the border dressed as a cowgirl, and sent a message to immigrants with prisoners in the background warning them not to enter the United States illegally.

Examples:

To find out more

Books:

• Arthur Miller: Politics and the Art of Acting
• Chris Salmon: Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind
• Luis Arroyo: Political power on stage
• James Poniewozik: Audience of One: Television, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Illusion
• Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle

Articles:

• Philippe Moreau: How to understand Donald Trump
• Megan Barber: Trump Is Breaking the Fourth Wall
• Maxim Voronov, Madeline Toubiana and Trish Ruebotton: How Reality TV Helps Explain Trump’s Success
• Ravi Agrawal: The Perils of a Reality TV Presidency
• John Street: What is Donald Trump? Forms of ‘Celebrity’ in Celebrity Politics

Videos:

• NBC News: 2000s: ‘Apprentice’ Helps Donald Trump Finally Launches A White House Bid
• The Atlantic: How the apprentice manufactured Trump

Podcast:

• The Reality TV President: Is Trump’s behavior changing the office of the president?

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