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Trump is using the tricks of reality TV against a virus — and it’s not going well

It’s hardly new or revelatory to say this, but it’s critical to remember the role that “The Apprentice” played in turning Donald Trump, a notoriously bad businessman with a string of bankruptcies, into an American icon of capitalist success. Everything from careful editing to set designers giving the dreary Trump Organization offices a glow-up came together to create the illusion of success where only failure and mediocrity had been before.

It was an experience so profound for Trump that he did something highly unusual: He learned something. He absorbed the idea that a well-constructed illusion of competence gets you all the benefits of being accomplished, without having to do the hard work of actually achieving anything.

Unfortunately, it was a lesson we are all paying the price for now. Continue reading.

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