It’s a mentality I got here to know intimately whereas interviewing him, beginning in 2021 after he’d left the White Home, for a e book on “The Apprentice.” Mr. Trump gave me hours of his time, typically extending our scheduled conferences at Trump Tower as we watched clips of the present collectively. I discerned that, in some ways, Mr. Trump sees his runs for president and his time within the White Home as extensions of his actuality present. In our conversations, he appeared engrossed by his picture and the trivia of his TV profession, way over by something he achieved as chief of the free world.
His expertise internet hosting “The Apprentice” informs how he views the world and the way he makes his choices. He typically talked about job candidates when it comes to “central casting,” channeling the spirit of a producer assembling a film forged. For the present, Mr. Trump would cease by casting calls to satisfy hundreds of contestants, and he instructed me he believed that he might determine star energy just by the way in which somebody appeared. That angle helps clarify what he’s searching for in a V.P.: the power to generate headlines and immediate the sort of drama that ensures his viewers received’t look away.
On this worldview, loyalty is all the things. Mr. Trump liked speaking to me about Joan Rivers, one in every of his favourite “Superstar Apprentice” winners, who publicly spoke of him fondly and credited him with reviving her profession after her time on the present in 2009. Superstar can also be a elementary qualification. He instructed me that within the White Home he thought of calling on Dennis Rodman, the previous N.B.A. star and “Superstar Apprentice” contestant, for assist in navigating overseas diplomacy, as he admired how Mr. Rodman had constructed an in depth relationship with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator. Mr. Trump additionally introduced the “Apprentice” contestant and infamous onscreen troublemaker Omarosa Manigault Newman with him to D.C. as a political adviser. “A number of issues I do in life, I do as an experiment,” he instructed me, when explaining that call. “I imply, I do it out of human curiosity — simply to see who’s loyal, who’s not loyal.”
The “experiment” Mr. Trump is conducting is how he can maintain our consideration. He was taught by Hollywood that one certain strategy to get renewed is to maintain viewers guessing and fire up drama. That mentality is obvious in his seek for a vp. It’s been reported that Marco Rubio, who’s spent his nationwide political profession representing Florida within the Senate, could be requested to maneuver out of state largely as a gesture to show his loyalty to Mr. Trump. There’s some debate over whether or not the Structure bars each members of the ticket from being registered to vote in the identical state, and whereas Mr. Trump might simply change his residence to Trump Tower or Bedminster, N.J., pressuring Mr. Rubio to relocate could be the final word loyalty check.
Then once more, to college students of “The Apprentice,” it might appear unlikely he’d choose the person he as soon as derided as “Little Marco.” Mr. Trump typically appeared to purposefully string alongside a candidate as a purple herring in among the present’s seasons, corresponding to when he saved Gary Busey hanging across the boardroom previous the purpose of plausibility.
