The Real Reality TV Hero
We all spent the better part of five years dealing with Donald J. Trump, who was, by any rational standards an abject failure as a real estate developer and general businessman. Those of us from New York City (I was there 1976 through 2019), and especially those of us who spent some of those years in the real estate development game, as I did between 2008 and 2017, were always well aware of his dismal business failings and flailing. To those who doubt that assessment, please remember that he filed for bankruptcy six times as follows:
1. 1991: Trump’s Taj Mahal
2. 1992: First of two Atlantic City casinos owned by Donald Trump.
3. 1992: Second of two Atlantic City casinos owned by Donald Trump.
4. 1992: Trump’s Plaza Hotel in New York City
5. 2004: Trump’s Hotels and Casinos Resorts
6. 2009: Trump’s Entertainment Resorts
This also does not include the other business failures like the various specific properties like his Trump Tower Tampa, that went into foreclosure, Trump University (ongoing in litigation), Trump Airlines (1988), Trump Beverages (2007), The Trump Game (1988), Trump Magazine (2009), Trump Mortgage (2007), Trump Steaks (2007), Trump Travel Site (2007), Trumpnet (1992), and Trump Vodka (2011).
The one thing that Trump can claim victory on is his reality TV career. The Apprentice ran from 2004 to 2017 and netted Trump a purported $450 million over those 15 seasons that it aired. It would be hard not to say that was a win for him. In fact, it might even be fair to say that it was The Apprentice which gave him the national exposure that led to his surprising victory in the 2016 presidential election. Most references of him as president in some way or another mentioned him as a reality TV star in the same way that Ronald Reagan was always referred to as a movie western star.
All that said and done, knowing full well that I have a decided anti-Trump bias as strong as anyone, I find there to be a dramatic difference in Trump’s case, as to the difference between him being a reality TV star (which he clearly was), and him being real in any other way. When I happened to watch The Apprentice, I was always put off by his lack of sound leadership practices and business decision-making capability. He was brash, impetuous, flippant, disrespectful and generally unprofessional by any standards I have grown to understand in almost fifty years of business. I found myself thinking that his tactics simply wouldn’t work in the business world that I knew. That made his business presence far less than real to me. I suspect anyone who knew him in his business life would agree with my general assessment. One friend who does know him and did do work for him and was subsequently an object of his unethical petulance (i.e. he tried to stiff him for a construction project he had commissioned) tells me he thinks he’s just a typical tough New York developer. It’s funny to me how other tough New York developers I know and who know him feel he is anything but typical for their breed. They try hard not to be likened to him for the most part.
As for Trump’s personal life, that requires subjectivity, but to me there is little or nothing real about him from start to finish. He didn’t really get into college on his own steam, he didn’t really graduate on his own merits, he didn’t really earn his chops at the ground level of business, but rather used his father’s money and position to perch himself in an exalted position from the get-go. I cannot say this definitively, but I will bet that Ivana, his first wife, would say that he didn’t impress her with his real qualities, but more so with his wallet (or more correctly, Daddy’s wallet). His marriages to Ivana and Marla were on full display for us all to see. I once saw him during my one visit to Mar-a-Lago in 1994 or so and watched him dancing in the disco there with his infant daughter Tiffany…at 2am. That hardly seems like anything a real father would do. Watching him with Melania and son Baron seems no less unreal for the whole world to see. The coldness in the eyes implies something other than real love for the man, but then again, who knows of such things. In other words, I suspect that there is very little about his life and how he lived it that would qualify by most of our standards as real.
By extreme contrast, and by virtue of many ironies, we have Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine. At age 44 he is 31 years younger than Trump and about as real as they come. The name alone sounds and spells out pretty real. He was born a Soviet citizen and raised as a native Russian speaker. His parents were academically oriented as a professor and engineer. His father faithfully served as a Russian officer in WWII despite being Jewish. His family suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust with several uncles having been interred and exterminated. And yet, he too made his career mark in entertainment, not unlike Trump. He was a comedian who then became…a reality TV star. The pinnacle of his role-playing career was when he played an ordinary man who became President of Ukraine. It doesn’t get more real than that since he went from that role on TV to running for and getting elected to the presidency…for real that time. Through his latter entertainment career and into his political career, Zelenskyy juggled the Russian and the Ukrainian parts of his heritage and upbringing. He protested against banning Russian entertainers from Ukrainian TV and seemed to have a balanced view of the importance of Russian culture in Ukrainian modern culture and life. Life is rarely black and white in real time and Zelenskyy seems to have understood how to navigate the grey zones that are the real world we all most often live in.
Now Zelenskyy is on TV almost every day making historic, almost Churchill-like or Lincoln-like addresses to the world in his defense of the sovereignty of his country. His country is a natural blend of Russian and unique Ukrainian culture. Putin says Ukraine as a culture and nation do not really exist, but there is Zelenskyy, looking more real and more human every day as millions of his people are displaced and suffer the horrors of war. Every day Zelenskyy lives in fear of being the object of Russian aggression against his and his family’s person. In one generation, the Zelenskyy family has gone from persecution and genocide from the West (Nazi Germany) and now persecution and genocide from the East (Mother Russia). He has been called a Russian by separatist Ukrainians and a Nazi by Putin’s mob. He is as real as it gets.
What irony there is in life that a man-child like Trump can dominate the airwaves during one period of time and an ex-comedian, ex-reality TV star like Zelenskyy can dominate those same airwaves in the next period of time. The connection between the two runs through Putin and Ukraine in too many ways to highlight again. If this whole Ukrainian saga, starting with Soviet Russia, running through independent Ukraine, veering into the era of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian stooge and his brother-from-another-mother Paul Manafort, the Hunter Biden Donald Trump story, co-staring a monkey-in-the-middle Zelenskyy, all leading to impeachment of the U.S. president, and now back into Putin invading and putting out death threats for Zelenskyy and his family, nobody who hasn’t lived it would believe it. This particular reality TV show would never get green lighted in Hollywood because it would never pass the reality smell-test.