Just days ago, House GOP members, including our own Congressman Dan Meuser, broke their promise to protect safety nets and passed Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill for Broligarchs, paving the way for gigantic cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and even Medicare.
Meanwhile, Trump’s trying to stop Harvard from accepting foreign students and to end funding for NPR and PBS. He also presented a picture from the Democratic Republic of Congo to support his false claims of South African genocide against white farmers.
For me, British mystery shows provide a temporary escape from the increasingly crazy and scary news from the White House and its congressional arm, but several days ago, I found myself streaming the “reality” series that convinced our country that Trump was a regal tycoon instead of a deadbeat loser.
In the first and most successful season of “The Apprentice,” 16 young men and women competed for what he called “the dream job of a lifetime,” an executive position at the Trump Organization. Fortunately, NBC ponied up the winner’s salary of $250,000 (about $428,000 today), given how the Donald avoids paying people for their work.
The contestants had to work in teams while knowing someone would be fired each week, which led to frequent backbiting and occasional backstabbing. It was fascinating to see what they’d do “for the love of money,” the title of the show’s theme song.
But what piqued my curiosity was a report that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem was backing an “Apprentice”-like show with immigrants vying for U.S. citizenship.
Noem’s department said she hadn’t even seen the proposal, but some challenges, like assembling a Model T and delivering mail on horseback, fit nicely with the mission of Trump and his Project 2025ers to send our country back 100 years or more.
Besides wanting to see the inspiration for such bizarre spectacles, I hoped to learn how Trump, despite his business and moral failures, impressed the millions of Americans who eventually elected him president.
As the 2025 election loomed, some people involved in “The Apprentice” admitted that they had sold the public a bill of goods.
“Thousands of 30-second promo spots that spread the fantasy of Trump’s supposed business acumen were beamed over the airwaves to nearly every household in the country,” a former NBC marketing executive wrote.
In reality, Trump had already filed for bankruptcy four times (and would do so twice more during the run of the show). In New York, he drew laughs of derision instead of the adoration he constantly sought.
So the network used spiffy sets instead of his shabby offices and worked their cinematic magic to produce an alternative Trump with an imposing presence, impeccable business skills and a hard-driving nature that was occasionally tempered with compassion and charm.
Considering what they had to work with, the producers may have concluded that less would be more. Trump’s brief on-screen appearances consisted mostly of assigning contestants their tasks, dispensing a bit of business advice and pitting members of the losing team against each other before ousting one of them.
The contestants did their part by expressing what sounded like heartfelt admiration for the guy who’d decide who’d get the dream job.
Which made me question their judgment. With all the accomplishments they touted, didn’t they do some due diligence? Or did the lure of appearing on national TV … trump … any well-founded concerns they might have had about dealing with a loose cannon?
Watching these episodes 21 years after they aired, I could sometimes spot the real Trump. He hyped himself incessantly. He debated the appearance of a fired female contestant with the males who remained. And some of his firings seemed baseless, even after editors tried to make the losers look bad and Trump to seem intelligent and reasonable.
All in all, “The Apprentice” left me longing for the early 2000s. There was a lot wrong with that time, but checks and balances got us through it. And the only damage Trump could do was to his own fortunes.
But I was reminded that if he and his allies get their way, we’ll someday look back nostalgically at this time, when much of their destructive agenda has yet to take hold.
Lisa Von Ahn is an experienced columnist previously published in the Pottsville Republican Herald newspaper.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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