The Art of Donald Trump; What The Apprentice Tells Us About the Candidate

Donald Trump’s success in leading the GOP field isn't a surprise to those that worked on and watched The Apprentice. His campaign rhetoric mirrors much of what he's been saying for years.

So what can we can glean from Trump’s performances?

“The biggest thing the show sold over all these years was Donald Trump and that's why he loved it,” Justin Hochberg, a producer on the show for the first three seasons, told WNYC. “He got the chance to promote his casinos and golf resorts and even products that didn't even exist,” he said, referring to an episode in which Trump Ice water was promoted. It is now sold at his hotels, restaurants, and golf courses.

Hochberg said the reason the show was so successful, and the reason he suspects Trump’s campaign has done well, is due to Trump's spontaneity. “You literally don't know what you're going to get, and whenever you think you're at the edge of reason it goes even further,” he said. “The only difference between Donald on The Apprentice and Donald today is there were producers like Mark Burnett and NBC editing Donald. Today, he says what he wants and it goes out live. But you are getting exactly who Donald is.”

Trump is also a master of the medium. “What you have is a genuine television mind,” Sal Fallica, a professor of media studies at New York University, said. “He understands how media works from the inside, he understands how it's going to look or appear after he makes outrageous remarks.”

Fallica teaches a class on propaganda and believes Trump is the epitome of post-truth politics. “To fact check him is quite frankly a useless task, it's not going to change, he's not going to say ‘Yes I'm wrong,’ he's never going to say that because that's not his persona.”

Eli Attie has experience in both the White House and show business. Attie served as special assistant to Bill Clinton and was Vice President Al Gore's chief speech writer. He was also a writer for the TV show The West Wing.

“If the purpose of the presidency is just to be in the news a lot, I think he'd be great at that,” Attie said. “But actually that's not something you have to worry about when you're the president, you're in the news anyway.”

Attie believes Trump excels at television because he knows how to appeal to people's emotions.

“Getting people to feel is more powerful that getting people to think,” he said. “He's an entertainer, he's a character, a carnival barker, if you think too deeply about him it all falls apart, because most of what he’s saying isn’t true and there's no substantive policies behind what he's talking about.”

And yet, Trump continues to lead in the polls.

“He works on the most visceral level, which is what movies and TV try to do, he's very effective on that level and it’s smart of him to do that because he's keeping people off of the level that makes you realize that he's actually kind of a phony.”

 In 2004, the year The Apprentice debuted, Trump filed for bankruptcy for the third time. He missed a $53 million bond interest payment for Trump Entertainment Resorts in Atlantic City. As a result, he gave up majority control and resigned as chairman. His name, however, remained on the hotels and casinos. Bankruptcy may have been a prudent business move, but that kind of practical, cut your losses business advice rarely found its way onto The Apprentice.

In fact, the realities of managing real estate, golf courses and casinos were rarely seen on the show. You never heard about the people who actually work for Trump's enterprises. There's never an episode about benefits, contract negotiations, the workers who keep the Trump empire running. Instead the show reduced business to a series of bromides. Not unlike Trump's campaign rhetoric.