An Insider from “The Apprentice” on How the Show Made Donald Trump

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: An Insider from “The Apprentice” on How the Show Made Donald Trump

Date: January 14, 2019
Host: Patrick Radden Keefe
Guest: Jonathan Braun (Supervising Editor, The Apprentice)

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Overview

This episode explores the transformative role NBC's "The Apprentice" played in shaping both public perception of Donald Trump and Trump's own self-image. Patrick Radden Keefe interviews Jonathan Braun, supervising editor on "The Apprentice," and together they dissect how reality television, particularly under producer Mark Burnett, crafts not just entertainment but deeply influential cultural icons. The episode scrutinizes the behind-the-scenes choices that recast Trump as “America’s Boss,” how those choices fed directly into Trump’s political persona, and reflects on the media’s complicity in amplifying that character.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mark Burnett’s Pivotal Influence

• [01:38 – 03:25]
  • Mark Burnett, creator of hit reality TV shows like Survivor, The Voice, and The Apprentice, is identified as arguably the most influential figure in Donald Trump’s rise.
  • Jimmy Kimmel’s 2016 Emmys joke (audio clip) is used to illustrate the cultural recognition of Burnett’s responsibility:

    “Thanks to Mark Burnett, we don't have to watch reality shows anymore because we're living in one.”
    — Jimmy Kimmel [02:48]

2. Reinventing Trump: From "Punchline" to "Master of the Universe"

• [03:25 – 07:33]
  • Trump’s pre-Apprentice reputation: largely a punchline, surrounded by stories of bankruptcies and failed ventures.
  • The show’s mission:

    “Our whole job was to reinvent him as this master of the universe... and broadcast that to tens of millions of people across the country.”
    — Patrick Radden Keefe [03:51]

  • Burnett’s and Trump’s shared cynicism and opportunism; Burnett’s view of American self-help culture and its intersection with Trump’s salesmanship:

    “There's a few things that Americans really believe in... they'll pay to have somebody tell them how to get rich.”
    — Patrick Radden Keefe [06:09]

3. Creating the Trump Persona on Television

• [06:28 – 09:32]
  • Trump maneuvered to house the show’s set in his own Trump Tower to profit directly.
  • Editorial teams painstakingly recast Trump as decisive and infallible, erasing signs of a struggling or declining empire.
  • The show gave Trump national visibility and an aura of success, with genuine effect:

    “People like me now, and they think I'm great, whereas before, they thought I was a bit of an ogre.”
    — Donald Trump (via Keefe) [07:51]

4. Editing Reality: The Work Behind the Curtain

• [09:32 – 13:29]
  • Jonathan Braun describes the process: hundreds of hours of footage edited down to build stories that fit the desired themes.
  • Early manipulation: contestants shot “exit” scenes on the first day, before anything actually happened, for narrative convenience.
  • Editors curated Trump’s onscreen decisiveness:

    “We would sometimes have to go back after he would choose which one won and which one lost, and we'd have to amp up or accentuate more the basis for that decision... we had to kind of present him in the best light possible.”
    — Jonathan Braun [11:26]

  • Parallels drawn to contemporary news media’s highlighting of Trump’s more coherent moments, editing out the rambling for clarity.

5. Satire, Subtle Hints, and the Power of Music

• [14:38 – 16:05]
  • No overt parody of Trump in the show but subtle cues: theme song “Money, Money, Money,” and the use of over-the-top music to slightly poke fun at Trump’s excess.
  • The orchestrated entrances (helicopters, gold escalators) manufactured a grandiose mystique, later mirrored in Trump’s 2015 campaign announcement:

    “We use that exact type of footage in the show many times... His entrances, they were designed, you know, whether it was coming in through closed doors... or coming down the escalator.”
    — Jonathan Braun [16:05]

6. Regrets and Accountability Among the Show’s Creators

• [16:55 – 18:38]
  • Most of “The Apprentice”’s creative staff (except Burnett) were left-leaning and personally disliked Trump, never expecting him to succeed politically.
  • Even as Trump began his campaign, editors thought it would fizzle and continued casting for another season of the show.
  • Open discomfort with the lasting impact their work had on American politics.

7. Mark Burnett’s Silence and Legacy

• [18:35 – 19:23]
  • Burnett refuses to discuss his Trump connection, focusing only on his current shows, yet cannot escape his outsized cultural responsibility:

    “I think the first line of this guy's obituary is going to be that he helped put Donald Trump into the White House. You can run from that, but I don't think you can hide.”
    — Patrick Radden Keefe [19:16]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jimmy Kimmel, at the Emmys:

  “If Donald Trump gets elected and he builds that wall, the first person we’re throwing over it is Mark Burnett.” [02:48]

• Jonathan Braun, on editorial manipulation:

  “We could never count on Donald making what would seem like a logical choice... so we would sometimes have to go back after he would choose which one won and which one lost, and we'd have to amp up or accentuate more the basis for that decision.” [11:26]

• Patrick Radden Keefe, on media editing:

  “So you think... the news media, weirdly enough, ends up doing exactly what you and your colleagues used to do, which is pulling out the one salient sound bite.” [13:29]

• Jonathan Braun, on orchestrated Trump entrances:

  “We use that exact type of footage in the show many times... if it was done inside the Trump Tower, of him coming down the escalator.” [16:05]

• Patrick Radden Keefe, on Burnett’s legacy:

  “I think the first line of this guy’s obituary is going to be that he helped put Donald Trump into the White House.” [19:16]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction & Emmys clip — [01:38 – 03:25]
• Trump as a pre-Apprentice punchline — [03:25 – 07:33]
• Editing Trump’s image — [09:32 – 13:29]
• Media parallels and soundbite culture — [13:29 – 14:38]
• Show’s subtle satire and music — [15:06 – 16:05]
• Trump’s campaign escalator moment echoes show staging — [16:05 – 16:55]
• Creators' regrets and expectations — [16:55 – 18:38]
• Burnett’s legacy and responsibility — [18:35 – 19:23]

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Tone & Closing Reflection

The tone is reflective and, at times, regretful—particularly from the show's creators—about the unintended consequences of their work. There is a persistent thread of irony in the contrast between the manufactured Trump persona and the man behind it. Both Keefe and Braun bring an insider's awareness and critical distance, encouraging listeners to think about the immense cultural power wielded by reality television and the editing bay.

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For readers new to the topic, this episode provides a comprehensive, behind-the-scenes look at how entertainment decisions can echo beyond the screen, shaping history in unexpected—and sometimes alarming—ways.

Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, the New Yorker's Patrick Radden Keefe talks with television producer and editor Jonathan Braun. Braun discusses his time working on NBC's the Apprentice and how that show helped shape the image of Donald Trump.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

There have been a lot of names attached to the rise of Donald Trump. Roy Cohn comes to mind, or Roger Stone. Steve Bannon. But the most influential figure on the 45th president has quite likely been a guy named Mark Burnett. And if you don't know that name, you're probably familiar with his work. Burnett is the English born TV producer who helped bring reality TV into our lives, producing Survivor, the Voice, Shark Tank and many other programs including the Apprentice. It's Burnett's work on the Apprentice that conceivably changed the world. Staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe recently profiled Mark Burnett and he wrote in depth about the Apprentice and its impact on Donald Trump. On how America saw Donald Trump and how Donald Trump saw himself. Patrick in your piece, you write about a moment in 2016 and Jimmy Kimmel was hosting the Emmys, and this was right before the election. And Kimmel did something which at that time was pretty unorthodox. He called out Mark Burnett, a name most people didn't know who was sitting in the audience, and he called him out for creating Donald Trump. Here's a clip of that.

[Jimmy Kimmel]

Many have asked who is to blame for Donald Trump, the Donald Trump phenomenon? And I'll tell you who, because he's sitting right there. That's right. That guy Mark Burnett, the man who brought us Celebrity Apprentice. Thanks to Mark Burnett, we don't have to watch reality shows anymore because we're living in one. Thank you, Mark. I'm going on the record right now. He's responsible if Donald Trump gets elected and he builds that wall. The first person we're throwing over it is Mark Burnett.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Is Jimmy Kimmel. Right. Did Mark Burnett create Donald Trump?

I think he is. I mean, look, Trump created Trump. There was a Trump Persona that Donald Trump invented for himself long before the show. But. But I interviewed a whole bunch of people who worked on the Apprentice over the years, and what they told me was he was kind of a punchline in the tower.

He's a kind of joke figure.

He. Absolutely.

And local.

Yes. And so what the folks who worked on the show said was that was the guy who we found. And our whole job was to reinvent him as this master of the universe who's always riding around Manhattan in helicopters and broadcast that to tens of millions of people across the country.

Now, tell us a little bit about Mark Burnett. He was born in England, was he not?

Yeah. So he grew up in East London watching Bonanza and other American TV shows.

So how did he get into TV himself?

He ends up coming to Los Angeles in the early 80s, and by his own admission, he starts working almost immediately without a green card and after working a few different jobs.

So just to be clear here, he's an illegal, as they say.

Certainly ironic in the Trump administration definition. Yeah. Mark Burnett could be sent home today. So he comes out, he starts working various jobs, but eventually finds his way into the very early days of reality tv. And from there, he goes on to have a tremendous success. His first really huge success with the show Survivor.

[Jimmy Kimmel]

The winner of the first Survivor competition is.

[Jonathan Braun]

Rich. Congratulations, Rich.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

So after Survivor, Burnett pitches the Apprentice, and he plucks Donald Trump out of the tabloids, puts him on the show, and it all turns out to be incredibly successful for both of them. What was the relationship personally, between Burnett and Donald Trump like?

It was fascinating. They were very Tight and remain very close to this day. Burnett loves to tell people that one of his two sons was the ring bearer when Trump married Mel at Mar A Lago. And it's interesting, though, in those early days, because Burnett is a guy who, to the extent that he had a belief system back then, it seems to have been very shaped by the kind of culture of American self help.

How do you mean?

Well, the kind of he really believed. He actually said at one point, there's a few things that Americans really believe in. They'll pay to figure out how to grow hair.

[Jonathan Braun]

They'll.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

They'll pay to have sex, and they'll pay to have somebody tell them how to get rich. And it's this weird thing, which I think he shares with Trump, where he's both kind of really cynical about how gullible Americans are, but also really excited about how you can sell them stuff.

So how did he. And the staff around him, how did they go about creating this character on television called Donald Trump?

So you talk to people who worked on the show, and they'll say, God, you know, he was such a hustler. When we first got started, we were looking for a studio space where we could have the boardroom. And we propose a place in Chelsea, and we propose a place downtown. And Trump keeps vetoing everything. We can't figure out why. And then finally says, well, you know, as it just so happens, I have an empty floor in Trump Tower.

What's the rent money?

I could lease to you at a reasonable rate. And then they agree that they're gonna do that, and they have to furnish the place. And so this is what they experienced. They told me, we walked through the offices, we saw chipped furniture. You really the kind of somebody who described it as kind of an empire in decline at that point. And their whole job was to make it seem slick, to make Trump seem like he was on the ascendant. They would film these very dramatic entrances for him all the time with dramatic music, and he would kind of stride out, and they made him seem very decisive, as though he was a guy with unimpeachable judgment.

One of the things that Trump was known for before the Apprentice was not only how much money he had made, but how much money he had lost, the bankruptcies and all the rest. Now the Apprentice recasts him as this wildly successful tycoon. How did that affect public perception of Donald Trump? Did it work?

It did, and it really affected it dramatically. If you go back, as I did, to the interviews that Trump did, Just before the Apprentice, and then just after it starts coming out, you see that even he is kind of surprised. I found this quote where he said, this is right after the show aired. He said, you know, people like me now, and they think I'm great, whereas before, they thought I was a bit of an ogre. Even by his own admission, he had become something of a punchline. So he would tell a story that, you know, page six in the New York Post, they don't buy that story anymore. But suddenly he's on NBC, on national tv, with tens of millions of people, and they bought it.

[Jimmy Kimmel]

But it wasn't always so easy. About 13 years ago, I was seriously in trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt. But I fought back, and I won big league.

[Jonathan Braun]

I used my brain.

[Jimmy Kimmel]

I used my negotiating skills.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

You actually spoke to someone who was intimately involved in the production of the Apprentice. Who is he and what did he do?

So I spoke to a guy named Jonathan Braun, who had a long history with Burnett, actually going back as far as ecochallenge. He'd worked on Survivor, and then he was one of the first people in on the Apprentice. And Braun was the supervising editor over the first six seasons of the Apprentice.

[Jonathan Braun]

The show was an immediate hit, you know, which supported Trump's ballooned ego because the numbers were good. Not ever as good as he said they were, but they were very good.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

So you sign on to the Apprentice at a point where you don't know who the host is going to be, but you know, it's a business show, and then you find out the host is Donald Trump. What were your impressions of Trump at the time?

[Jonathan Braun]

My impression of Donald Trump at the time. And again, this is 2004, 2003, I think, is when we shot it. He had just come out of I don't know how many bankruptcies. His reputation had sunk quite low. You know, he was known amongst me and my friends and my peers and everybody that I'd talked to as kind of an oddball celebrity for being a loser, for building a tall building but not being able to rent it out.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Tell me, how would you describe the role of an editor in a reality TV show?

[Jonathan Braun]

The simple answer is that we scour through hours and hours of material that's shot and look for stories that we can relate to. The theme of the show, we showed everything that happened the way it happened. But, you know, like anything, you. You know, you can't show the entire 300 or 400 hours. You have to show the representative portions of it. And, yeah, there Are there are techniques that we use to enhance that. For example, the first day of shooting was individually shooting every contestant leaving as if they've been fired.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Is that right?

[Jonathan Braun]

So, yeah, the very first thing they shot was people leaving the front of the building with their rolling suitcase and the suit, you know, that they would wear.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

They all have to enact their own death before they even get started. Yeah.

[Jonathan Braun]

Because you just didn't know who it was going to be.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Amazing. And can you tell me just a little bit about the ways in which, in terms of the creation of the Trump Persona, the things that the show did to make him out to be this master of the universe?

[Jonathan Braun]

Well, the famous one is that he can make decisions, that he can make sober, thoughtful decisions that seem like they were actually thought out. But I gotta tell you, I don't know that they were. He reacted a lot, very instinctually to things he didn't always make sense. We reversed engineered the show in that, you know, we could never count on Donald making what would seem like a logical choice in who the winner and loser would be. So we would sometimes have to go back after he would choose which one won and which one lost, and we'd have to amp up or accentuate more the basis for that decision. We had to kind of present him in the best light possible. You know, editors go through and make sure you take out people's ums, ahs, and false starts and things like that. You do that with people, you know, if they say something dumb, you don't show that part. You know, if majority of what they're saying is pretty smart or fits what the story is. You know, you keep that part and you get rid of the part that doesn't follow that. And I think it's super fascinating and very gratifying and validating is that this is what the White House has to do with Trump. You know, you can watch him any day of the week when he's live in front of a press group, and he'll just start rambling on about something. Most of the time, it doesn't even make sense. But when he does find something he wants to say, he'll say it five or six times, times, over and over again, but slightly differently. And if you hear it all together unedited, it's like, what? But, you know, when we would cut it down to the salient parts, or when news media, you know, pulls out a bite or pulls out a clip, you know, it kind of makes sense. I mean, you know, people get.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

That's fascinating. So you think so when you watch him today, you feel as though the news media, weirdly enough, ends up doing exactly what you and your colleagues used to do, which is pulling out the one salient sound bite from the kind of.

[Jonathan Braun]

Absolutely.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

The whole maw of free association.

[Jonathan Braun]

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, it's a technique that we all use in whatever communications media we're in. You need to present the most clear argument for something. But somebody who is a good speaker, a good orator, can say it without stumbling, without backing up and reversing himself and saying something crazy. I think that's part of the reason why we have these two completely different ecospheres of people who say, no, what he's saying makes total sense, and other people saying what he's saying is completely crazy or is completely wrong or bad. Because you can pull whatever you want from there. You could pull the good one, the one where it sounds like he makes sense, or you can pull the one that, you know, that doesn't.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Yeah, I spoke to you and I spoke to others who were involved in the show, and a number of people told me, yeah, you know, it was all a little bit tongue in cheek. So I went back and I watched a bunch of episodes, and I just. I didn't see it. I didn't see the wink.

[Jonathan Braun]

Yes. Obviously, it was not something that we overtly did. We didn't parody Don Donald Trump. So you can't, you know, you can't be. You know, you can sort of sneak a few things in.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, can you give me an example?

[Jonathan Braun]

Yeah. I mean, the theme song itself was a kind of disco funk, kind of like New York.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Money, money, money, money.

[Jonathan Braun]

And it was. I mean, that in and of itself was funny. I mean, because, you know, the song itself kind of puts down the idea of having a lot of money is gonna make you happy. And we would use that kind of music, especially when Donald would show up.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

But it's interesting you should mention his entrances because so, you know, 2015, Trump announces his candidacy for president, and he does it in the atrium at Trump Tower. And he starts out at the top of that gold escalator, and he rides down, actually kind of facing out, and there's all these people standing around watching him. And I wonder, I mean, you've surely seen that footage. Did it remind you of anything?

[Jonathan Braun]

Absolutely. You know, we use that exact type of footage in the show many times when he would. If he were to assign a task, he would, you know, gather both teams together and say, okay, here's your task. Your task was going to do this or do that. And his entrances, they were designed, you know, whether it was coming in through closed doors and, or coming in on a helicopter or in this case, you know, if it was done inside the Trump Tower, of him coming down the escalator. Good morning. Morning, Mr. Trump.

[Jimmy Kimmel]

When I we're in the lobby of Trump Tower, it's big. I think big. I want you to think big, too.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

That's Jonathan Braun, who is the supervising editor on the Apprentice. We heard a clip of Donald Trump descending the golden escalator in season two of the Apprentice in a shot that's reminiscent, to say the least, of Trump's descent on that escalator when he announced his 2016 campaign. Braun spoke with the New Yorker's Patrick Keefe. Now, Patrick, we tend to think of Hollywood dominated by left leaning people, liberals. The people who worked on the Apprentice are from that very same world. Did they feel bad about the role they might have played in Trump's rise to power?

Yeah. So the first thing to understand is that the people who are involved with that show, with the big exception of Mark Burnett, tend not to like Donald Trump. They didn't like him when they were making the show.

Why not?

Because he was a. He could turn. What I kept hearing was he was somebody who could turn on the charm when he felt as though it behooved him to do so, but was generally not a likable person to work with and was kind of increasingly ridiculous with every passing year. He would often suggest that he was going to run for president, even when he announced in 2015. All of the people who were involved in the Apprentice at that point privately say this isn't going to. This will play itself out pretty quickly. Donald will be back to a point.

Where much of the country thought that.

They did, but to a point where they were actively casting the next season of the Apprentice even as Donald Trump was running for president. Because they all felt as though, look, at a certain point he's gonna come back and then we'll just go right back into business and we don't wanna not have a cast at that stage.

Why didn't Mark Burnett want to talk to you?

That's a good question. He does continue to talk to journalists to promote his shows. He won't answer questions about Trump. And to me, this is really interesting because I think this is a guy who's in a futile race with his own legacy. He's trying to kind of run away from his own legacy. He doesn't want to address it. He'd rather just keep focusing on the shows, but the reality is he's still close with Trump. They still talk. He was involved in helping produce the inauguration. And I think the first line of this guy's obituary is going to be that he helped put Donald Trump into the White House. You can run from that, but I don't think you can hide.

Patrick, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer, and you can find his article about Mark Burnett and the rise of Donald [e-mail] Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Charlamagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

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