For years, we've been living inside a story defined by Donald Trump's reality-TV worldview. America has finally changed the channel
Fireworks spell out President Donald Trump's name over the Washington Monument at the close of the Republican National Convention on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Aug. 27, 2020. For years, we’ve been living inside a story defined by Donald Trump’s reality-TV worldview. America finally changed the channel
Image: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Many incumbent presidents have gone on the campaign trail to make their cases for a second term. Donald Trump was the first to campaign for a second season.
At a 2019 campaign rally in Minnesota, he described his victory in 2016 as “one of the greatest nights in the history of television.” And he often seemed to cast his reelection argument less in terms of policies than as a TV producer’s pitch to keep the show going.
Only with him, he argued, would you get the zing, the pizazz, the drama that kept you on the edge of your seat. A vote for President-elect Joe Biden, he told a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 20, would be a vote for “boredom.”
“Look at all those cameras,” he said, gesturing at the press pen. “If you had Sleepy Joe, nobody’s going to be interested in politics anymore.”
On Nov. 3, a majority of the electorate answered, “You promise?”
©2019 New York Times News Service