How Trump turned his 2020 TV appearances into one big reality show

As we look back at the Trump presidency, it often feels like America has endured four years of reality TV – with its leader as a main contestant.

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Sometimes, life began to imitate fiction – like when Trump lost the election and a storyline from HBO’s Veep started to play out in real life. Near the end of this year’s race, Trump’s supporters campaigned for the counting of votes to be halted in areas where the president was down, and for the counting to continue in areas where he had lost – a plot line so ridiculous it was made for satire. Other times, Trump wrote the script himself.

We have charted his most mind-boggling moments of 2020, which show how the president turned an institution of governance into theatrics, smoke and mirrors, and entertainment.

State of the Union

It has often been said that Trump behaved as president like he did when he hosted The Apprentice. No event more clearly evidenced that theory than his State of the Union address. Usually a stately and solemn event, in 2020, Trump padded it with surprises and giveaways. Watch as a doting mother is reunited with her husband returning from Afghanistan – on tonight’s episode of the State of the Union! Oh, what’s that? A surprise giveaway of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award that can be given to a civilian? Oh, and here’s an even bigger shock: it’s going to the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for his services to, uh … Well, hold that thought, because here’s another surprise! A surprise scholarship giveaway for a fourth-grade student from Philadelphia! So much for a night that was supposed to be about the country’s true priorities.

His spats with reporters

Trump turned press briefings from a forum to keep the president accountable and to inform the world about his policy decisions; to a daily performance ripe with monologues, insults and interruptions. Absolute loyalty was expected, and dissent was treated like treason. Journalists who tried to hold him to account were treated with disdain, interrupted or admonished, with their right to ask further questions revoked.

Many believe public officials should remain above drama and spats, but Trump seemed unable to stop himself from putting on a show – especially if it seemed he wasn’t “winning”.

“Be nice, don’t be threatening,” he told PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor when she asked the president about New York’s lack of ventilators back in April. “You’re a fake,” Trump would proclaim to reporters who asked him difficult questions. When asked about the US lives lost to the virus at a press briefing, Trump thought it pertinent to respond to an Asian American journalist: “Ask China.”

He might as well have been pointing a finger at each of them proclaiming, “You’re fired.”

His Covid-19 diagnosis

Of course, the president – who had spent months eschewing social distancing rules and refusing to wear a mask – eventually caught the coronavirus. In the final months of an election, his inner circle started to drop like flies; but he wasn’t going to go down without a show. After finding out he was sick, Trump was flown to the hospital. Ever aware of his image, he made sure he was photographed walking to the helicopter by himself - he reportedly did not want people to see him needing to be assisted out of the White House if his health got worse.

It wasn’t long before he was in the back of his motorcade, probably still contagious, waving to fans like the reality TV celebrity he’s always been.

“Maybe I’m immune,” he later announced while doing the rounds on a number of favorable TV shows.

Soon, Trump was out again, doused in his customary orange fake tan. Standing on the White House balcony, surreptitiously wheezing, he addressed his fans in a scene befitting the Hunger Games. There, he told people the virus was “disappearing” as a threat to Americans. It wasn’t: December was the worst, deadliest month for coronavirus cases in the US on record.

That photo op

As protests grew across the country this summer in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Trump must have known how it looked. Here was the president of law and order, sending in troops to fight his own people; the man who fought against lockdown; the man who likened Democratic cities to “war-zones”, teargassing peaceful protestors.

But Trump knows a picture is worth a thousand words. Before the reality could sink in, of the president who hid in a bunker during the civil unrest, he made sure he had the perfect photo opportunity. His bodyguards parted crowds of choking protesters to deliver it to him: standing outside St John’s Episcopal church in DC, Trump stood with a Bible in his hands, looking sombre, as if the city around him wasn’t on fire.