Post 1
Try this party ice-breaker. Pipe up and say, “I once talked to Donald Trump each week.”
It works for me.
Thursdays with Trump lasted 14 weeks back in 2004. I was a reporter in the Money section of USA Today, working a new beat the newspaper established called “corporate leadership.” The aim of the beat was to get chief executives and other decision-makers to put down their New York Times and their Wall Street Journals and read USA Today somewhere other than at hotels.
USA Today was popular, we were the best-read newspaper in the land due to the lead we held among the basket of deplorables in fly-over country. New York Times reporters believed we sold to people who moved their lips when they read. In retaliation, I went after their snobs.
I had already interviewed Trump from time to time, but when NBC aired promos for the first season of The Apprentice on Thanksgiving in 2003, USA Today knew that it couldn’t live without a weekly inside package on the leadership lessons of each episode. USA Today recognized the importance of TV dating back to its 1982 launch. We were the best newspaper at TV, and I was dragged back to that center of gravity. The Apprentice was mine and I was “on” it from January 8 to April 15.
I don’t cover politics, never had the stomach for it, and I haven’t had a conversation with President Trump since he announced his candidacy. I remember him picking up the phone each Thursday afternoon to say, “Del, this is big. This is Yuuuuuuge. We’re No. 1 in the ratings.”
The exaggeration was repeated every Thursday in the manner he later pumped up the size of his inauguration crowd. The Apprentice was a hit, no doubt, but it finished the season in the top seven of the Nielsens with 20.7 million viewers. The final episode of The Apprentice was No. 1 with 28 million, but I didn’t talk to Trump that Thursday because the final “You’re Fired!” was live.
One Thursday, Trump answered his cell phone with a different opening line. “Del,” he said. “I don’t have much time to talk today, I’m golfing with Tiger Woods. This is Yuuuuuuge.”
After our abbreviated conversation, I called the PGA press office to learn that Trump and Woods were playing in the same pro-am, but they weren’t paired together. I played a little golf a long time ago, and it’s my understanding that golfers who play together are customarily playing the same hole, not somewhere within 75 acres of each other.
Trump seems to tell the truth about major things. He’s fulfilled, or attempts to fulfill, his campaign promises. Why he lies about stupid, little things so easily verifiable is a head-scratcher. By the end of this series of blogs I will take a stab at an explanation. Why does Trump exaggerate when he knows he’ll be caught? Hell, I don’t know yet. I don’t relate to it, but neither am I a leader. I’m a writer with an expertise in leadership who has never been the boss of anyone. That’s no exaggeration.
In the coming weeks, I’ll re-watch the first season of The Apprentice episode by episode just as I did for 14 weeks in 2004. Maybe Trump’s tasks––the scavenger hunts and lemonade sales––will seem less inane this time around. We all know that reality TV doesn’t work unless it’s unrealistic. There was enough backstabbing from Omarosa alone to destroy any enterprise, but I’ll take another look at what Trump saw in her now that I’m no longer on deadline. I’ll convince you that the first season of The Apprentice can change your life. (An exaggeration?)
Thursdays were busy back then. When I arrived at work I’d have a tape of the episode waiting for me in the mailroom. There were less than twelve hours before it aired. Those were prehistoric days and I’d pop the tape into the VCR, watch, and scribble notes. No time to watch twice. I enlisted a panel of leadership experts, who would likewise receive an overnight tape, view it, and give me their thoughts by lunchtime. By late afternoon, I was ready for my conversation with the show’s star. Articles inside the Money section would be published the next morning. Editors liked that the package wouldn’t get stale for USA Today’s Friday-Sunday edition.
This series of posts will be different that other Trump blogs because little will be said of politics. That’s impossible where it comes to Trump, but I’ll do my best to keep it apolitical.
I have great respect for journalists whose politics can’t be guessed. I took pride in not revealing my politics to readers and the new leadership book I edited, Advice From the Top: 1001 Bits of Business Wisdom is loaded with tips from all political stripes, including pro-life Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan and socialist Kazuo Inamori, the Japanese CEO who lectures America on corporate greed.
You will also find my debut historical novel, The Cremation of Sam McGee,
about a fabricating journalist working for William Randolph Hearst in the 1898 heyday of yellow journalism. My editor, Tammy Greenwood, says the language is stellar, the dialogue terrific, the characters larger than life. She says the the novel reminds her that history repeats itself.