The stately room has long been a site of diplomacy. But the reality-star president often does not come there to make friends.
“This is going to be great television, I will say that.”
So concluded President Trump after a stunning Oval Office confrontation in February, in front of live cameras, in which he and Vice President JD Vance took turns castigating President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and held out the prospect of withholding support for the country invaded by Russia.
At a May meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Mr. Trump brought his own television, playing video clips to support his false claims that white South African farmers have been the victims of genocide. The ambush, which also found Mr. Trump showing a news image actually taken from the Democratic Republic of Congo, left Mr. Ramaphosa scrambling to respond. But again, the cameras broadcast it all.
The confrontations were shocking compared with how diplomacy has long been conducted in that stately office. But they were not surprising — at least, not to anyone who had watched Mr. Trump during his 14 seasons as the capricious, demanding host of the NBC business-competition series “The Apprentice.”
In his high-drama Oval Office meetings, carried live on cable news, Mr. Trump has created himself a reality show right inside the White House. It is a serial production, tailored to his tastes for attention and drama, in which his guests submit to judgment and win a blessing or a tongue-lashing.
The dynamic in these showdowns is oddly similar to the climactic “firings” Mr. Trump conducted on the NBC show. Then, as now, Mr. Trump was installed in a set designed to magnify his power — in “The Apprentice,” it was a sleek “boardroom” custom-built to improve on Trump Tower’s underwhelming real-life offices.
Reality competition shows and Mr. Trump’s politics operate on the same principles: shock value, conflict, shows of dominance. Escalating a fight is almost always better for ratings than defusing one. So it was in Mr. Trump’s TV career; so it is in his administration, whether the tussle is with a world leader or Elon Musk.
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Source: Television - nytimes.com
