Television manufactured Trump’s business-genius persona before his political rise

Evidence

But The Apprentice gave Trump an image makeover, introducing him to middle Americans as a bona fide business genius. Creator Mark Burnett meticulously crafted this narrative, driven both by the show’s storylines and his personal belief that Trump was “a real American maverick tycoon” in the mold of the industrial titans who built the West. This fabricated persona gave Trump the platform he needed to step directly into politics. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 422

Categorization

• SEED: The reality-show production of a political persona is a strong essay angle on how manufactured celebrity becomes governable power — i.e., is Trump the endpoint of the 20th-century mass-media celebrity machine the Culture chapter charts?
• XREF: connects to: Cable news networks profited enormously by giving Trump free media coverage — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 188; TV familiarity made Trump feel personally known while Clinton seemed remote — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2041