Season two of Donald Trump’s White House reality show is already a disaster
Season one of Donald Trump’s White House reality show was, by any objective measure, a disaster. His ratings started off poorly and dropped to historically low levels. He voted most of his own most interesting villains off the show, leaving basically no one by season’s end. He tried testing network censors and even threw in a porn star subplot, but none of it worked. This show has somehow made it to season two, but things aren’t exactly off to a great start.
Trump tried to shake things up by ending season one on a cliffhanger by shutting down the entire government. Season two began today with him holed away in the White House residence, unwilling or unable to function on any level, while tweeting about what he’s watching on Fox News. This is normally the part in a scripted television show where the writers room would steer things back toward normal by the end of the season two premiere. But this show has no writers room, just a mentally incompetent racist buffoon and a small band of white supremacist advisers. So what now?
Trump tried throwing a party in his own honor tonight, to celebrate the launch of the second season, but he’s not even able to attend his own party. If that’s not cliche enough, his antics have somehow resulted in the Statue of Liberty being barricaded. Is it possible to script the idea of a failed American government any more on-the-nose than to shut down the Statue of Liberty? This is one step shy of Charlton Heston screaming at the broken down statue at the end of Planet of the Apes.
If there’s a good sign when it comes to Donald Trump’s White House reality show, it’s this: millions of people took to the streets today to speak out against this disastrous show. Far more people are protesting against the show than dutifully tuning in for it. Trump loves bragging about ratings, so he should know better than anyone that his failing reality show is unlikely to make it through season two without getting canceled.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report