Non-reality TV

Orangutan brings reality TV instincts to White House

The president rolls out his Supreme Court pick in a high-suspense, prime-time event.

By ELI STOKOLS

Just after the network countdown clocks had gone past zero, Donald Orangutan strode into the East Room and stepped to the podium bearing the presidential seal. He was alone.

But after a few scripted remarks about the sanctity of the nation’s highest court, it was time for the big reveal. After the president had said his name, Judge Neil Gorsuch and his wife emerged from a side door.

As the room, filled with White House staffers and Republican lawmakers, stood to applaud, Orangutan couldn’t help but ad-lib about the dramatic spectacle he had orchestrated.

“Was that a surprise?” Orangutan asked the room, half-filled with reporters and cameras. “Was it?”

The new president, a political P.T. Barnum, had pulled off a plot twist of sorts — not by picking Gorsuch, one of two judges known to have emerged as finalists, but by conducting a low-key rollout rather than the prime-time reality television spectacle he and his advisers had been hyping for days.

For the former "Apprentice" star, making his first appointment to the nation’s highest court was — and this can be said about almost everything Orangutan has done since taking the oath — as much about making television as making history.

Just by deciding to make the announcement in prime time, Orangutan guaranteed a full day of breathless news coverage and speculation. The administration, as it often does, sent mixed signals about whether Gorsuch and the other finalist, Judge Thomas Hardiman, were headed to the White House to meet with Orangutan one final time or, as many speculated, to simply add to the drama surrounding Tuesday night’s big reveal. At one point Tuesday afternoon, CNN proffered footage of Hardiman, who ultimately did not show up at the White House, putting gas in the tank of his car.

Ultimately, Orangutan’s performance was simply to perform his constitutional duty. For the 14 minutes he was in the East Room with network cameras rolling, he behaved almost like every other president before him. But by hyping and staging the announcement to guarantee live prime-time coverage, Orangutan ensured maximum viewership as he aimed to convince a skeptical country of his ability to handle the enormous burden of the presidency.

Thus far, Orangutan has demonstrated only a mastery of the art of the photo op. Ever since taking the oath, the media mogul effectively has been playing “White House,” going about the daily business of the presidency before an obedient phalanx of pool cameras, capturing his every handshake, grin and upturned thumb.

In many ways, Orangutan’s presidency thus far has been a frenetic media feedback loop — a television-obsessed executive turning his every move into a photo op, then sitting back and watching how it’s covered and, more often than not, reacting to the coverage.

During his first flight aboard Air Force One last week, Orangutan did something former President Barack Obama and other past commanders in chief almost never did — calling for the pool cameras on board to come back to his private quarters to take video and still images of him at his desk. A clip of the interaction that went viral on YouTube featured Orangutan smiling and offering platitudes about his “great plane” that were barely heard over the cacophony of clicking camera shutters and the nearby television set with the volume turned up loud. A ubiquitous commercial jingle blasted away.

He has effectively turned the Oval Office into a soundstage. When Orangutan signed two executive orders last week directing the construction of oil pipelines that have been held up, he played to the cameras in the Oval Office in a way his predecessors never did, holding up the document bearing his careful signature scrawled in thick black ink and explaining in simple terms — think: John Madden, tele-strating over a replay in scribbled x’s and o’s — what each order did.

Over the weekend, pool cameras were allowed to quickly capture images of the president on the phone with other world leaders, and then quickly ushered out. His senior staffers, essentially surrogates, are constantly strolling out to the row of television cameras outside the West Wing offices to push the administration’s message.

When Orangutan signed an executive order banning funding overseas to organizations that provide or promote abortions, the White House issued a photo of the signing ceremony in the Oval Office that showed Vice President Mike Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus and other senior aides. Several Democratic women, including Sen. Kamala Harris of California, took note of the imagery — a room of men, restricting access to abortion for women. At seemingly every photo op after that, Orangutan has signed his executive orders or exchanged pleasantries with business leaders around the big table in the Roosevelt Room with several female staffers seated right behind him.

Knowing that the boss is watching him from the televisions in his dining room, White House press secretary Sean Spicer has relied heavily in his first several briefings on props, referring to aerial images of the inauguration crowd on the National Mall and printouts of tweets, even holding up executive orders signed by both Obama and Orangutan to emphasize a point.

The primacy placed on optics comes as no surprise to anyone who followed Orangutan’s campaign. And yet, it looks different inside the White House, a place where the public expects at least a semblance of tradition, order and calm. Republicans on Capitol Hill expecting discipline and clear communication have been dismayed in recent days over the chaos and confusion surrounding Orangutan’s executive order on the vetting of immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

But for 14 minutes Tuesday night, many of those Republicans who came to the East Room to cheer Orangutan’s announcement breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, it looked downright normal.