Last night's speech "seemed designed in part to remind Americans of the munificent Donald Trump persona molded by Mark Burnett on The Apprentice for a decade," says James Poniewozik, who wrote a book on the president's relationship with TV. Poniewozik adds: "It’s no secret that Donald Trump, just months before he ran for the job of most powerful man in the world, was hosting Season 7 of The Celebrity Apprentice. But not all his TV appearances as president have been as reality-fied as one might have expected, especially his sedate, from-the-TelePrompTer State of the Union speeches. The TV president made up for that Tuesday night with a dumbfounding, stunt-laden spectacle, less a presidential address than an Apprentice finale wrapped in an Oprah episode stuffed inside a viral YouTube video and dropped into the middle of a WrestleMania match. The speech was jammed with more twists and giveaways than a two-hour Survivor finale. President Trump awarded a young girl in the audience a scholarship. He had his wife, Melania, drape a Presidential Medal of Freedom around the paleoconservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh. He arranged a reunion between a deployed soldier and his wife, just like the surprise-military-return videos that TV morning shows love. And all these planned moments may have been overshadowed by a drama-filled, two-part installment of The Real Politicians of D.C., co-starring his antagonist Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. Before he began his speech, he appeared to refuse her offer of a handshake; after he finished, she ripped up her copy of it on camera. Neither of them, it seems, came there to make friends."
TOPICS: Trump Presidency, State of the Union Address