APPRENTICE IN WONDERLAND

The co-editor-in-chief of Variety gets Donald Trump talking—a lot—about the reality TV show that led to his leap from New York media character to president of the United States.

Much of the credit for the remaking of Trump from tabloid clown into America’s most famous businessman and a viable presidential contender lies with Mark Burnett, a Brit who arrived in the U.S. in the 1980s with $600 in his pocket and rose to become king of reality television with his creation of the genre’s first megahit, CBS’ Survivor. Burnett (who mostly eluded Setoodeh’s grasp for this book) conceived of The Apprentice as “Survivor in the City.” As the first season progressed, Trump got bitten by the ratings bug; a page from Variety recording the show’s season 1 finale beating all comers for the night is proudly displayed on memento walls at both Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago. It’s an important document in Trump’s world, “something that seems to carry as much value to him as the U.S. Constitution, if not more,” Setoodeh suggests. Trump repeatedly boasts to Setoodeh that The Apprentice was more culturally significant than it actually was; in fact, it steadily declined in ratings, as most shows do from season to season. (The author fact-checks Trump’s exaggerations and flat-out falsehoods throughout.) In addition to Trump, Setoodeh interviewed former contenders, Trump organization staffers, and network execs to capture the show’s controversies and gossip-page scandals. Setoodeh is an amusing guide on this tour of Trump’s and the nation’s descent down the rabbit hole into a wonderland where politics and entertainment blend into each other and lies become truths, if you only believe.

A vivid portrait of Trump as self-made (and made-in-the-editing-room) alpha male, both two-dimensional and larger than life.