Orange Lotus: How the Trump Show Outwits Reality

One thing you have to acknowledge about Trump is that he understands the press so much better than the press understands him. He structures his presidential wins on the two-week theory – that’s the amount of time he knows that the news cycle, and the screen-addled attention of the American public, can be bothered to pay attention to any given topic. He learned this from his 14 seasons on The Apprentice, deep in the world of reality show producer Mark Burnett. The show, the episode, the season has to keep moving with new reveals and by lobbing bombs of surprise—or you lose the audience. In the first six months of his second term, American politics have become an unending season of Orange Lotus.

After the flash-bang pilot episode of Trump wrecking ball Elon Musk indiscriminately dismantling swathes of the federal government, we knew the narrative seeds were planted for a scene-chewing flameout later in the season.

Credit: Reuters

Tariffs consumed more episodes than they should have, given the innate boredom with and incomprehension of the topic by most tuned-out Americans. Branded as Liberation Day, the plotline had to be rushed out of the writers’ room prematurely after Signalgate, starring elite smart-ass and Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, derailed the Trumpian narrative about a hand-picked cabinet of slick, camera-ready, lethally focused national security operatives. There wasn’t even time to get the usual flashy marketing touches in place as Trump held aloft what looked like a mid-management marketing board listing “reciprocal" tariff rates by country. The hasty list was so riddled with errors that it featured not just bad math, but islands inhabited only by penguins and seals, including what sounds like a MAGA destination for fast food tourists, McDonald Island. Trump wants to put the tariff turkey to bed this week, when he sends out a flurry of shakedown letters to all the penny-ante foreign powers who should now put up and shut up before the whole storyline jumps the shark.

Fight Club

Back in late February, roughing up Zelensky in the Oval Office offered a ground-and-pound takedown, worthy of a UFC pay-per-view special, that Trump acknowledged (on camera) “made for great television.” But nothing plays better than beating up on Ivy League academia, white-shoe law firms — and California, that liberal sneer terrain of hair-tossing Governor Gavin Newsom. If you watched any other channel but Fox, what looked on TV like a raucous melee of several hundred mostly peaceful protesters waving anti-ICE signs was recast by Trump as an American city under “invasion” and “conquered by a foreign enemy” of, uh, undocumented house painters and home health aides. Btw, after the “emergency” fell off our screens, whatever happened to the 700 Marines rushed into the made-for-TV crisis? Still sleeping on the floors of federal buildings? Or back in San Diego and other bases, knocking back brewskis and asking each other, what the hell was that all about? The show moved on…

Credit: Illustration by Erin Aulov/Politico

In a hectic return cameo by Elon Musk, tweet tirades suddenly erupted from his X account. Irate that subsidies for EVs were not in the Big Beautiful Bill and that the $3.3 trillion addition to the deficit was hardly in the spirit of his chainsaw massacre at DOGE, Musk’s pissing match with the president was a global ratings phenomenon. Trump, his shoulders now as wide as an oversized Chesterfield sofa, went full-on mob boss, as he threatened to deport the (increasingly pallid) richest man in the world (and U.S. citizen) to his native South Africa, and reminded MAGA that there is only one capo in the Oval Office. But the cliffhanger isn’t over. Musk’s limitless checkbook will extract future gigantosaurus-sized revenge (and possibly a whole spin-off series), not only funding anti-Trump candidates, but already announcing the launch of a third political party.

Season climax. BOOM! Trump announces on June 19 that he would decide in the next (guess what?) two weeks whether the U.S. would join forces with Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Does anyone think Trump could bear to spend 14 days on thoughtful geopolitical cogitation about cause and effect or give space to Witkoff’s old-school diplomacy with foot-dragging mullahs? (Bibi up and whacked Iran’s chief negotiator anyway.) Or did Trump, in fact, have no idea what he was going to do until he watched Fox News, listened to his favorite podcasters, saw Bibi coronated for Operation Rising Lion, and wanted a piece of winner’s glory? Out of Trump’s ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let’s bomb the shit out of Fordo.

After the ensuing ceasefire between Iran and Israel went wobbly, Trump exploded on the White House lawn that Israel and Iran “don't know what the fuck they're doing." You could feel the world’s most seasoned showrunner’s frustration that the cast was blowing his decreed blockbuster ending. The credits were supposed to roll after he presidentially declared, “Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated." Finito. Done. Get it, Bibi? Get it, mullahs? THIS EPISODE IS OVER. Fordo is fucked! Play the goddamn theme music! There are no lagging repercussions in Trump’s world. As he overcomes his – and our – clinical inattention, he never considers that the powers that menace us work on a slower clock, and a longer-term strategy.

Bonus episode. With the Supreme Court in his pocket and Congress at his feet, Trump ended this season as a loot-dripping King of the World. Was there any doubt his Big Beautiful Bill would pass by the iconic date of July 4^th? Trump would have thrown out any hardwon political item to get that “great TV” tableau of all his political vassals cheering as his flourishing pen signed away healthcare and food assistance for millions of needy citizens on the day that marks the birth of America. What will there be left to celebrate next year on the nation’s 250^th anniversary? Trump has already announced he will host a UFC fight on the grounds of the White House. Perhaps there will also be a live special of Mexican immigrants ejected into the swamps around “Alligator Alcatraz.” This is not Orange Lotus, it’s the Roman Colosseum.

River of Pain

We live not in a reality show but in reality itself, where decisions have consequences. The deadly weekend flash floods in Texas Hill Country were as ominous as they were horrific. When we learned of the climbing death toll, including some two dozen girl campers at the beloved childhood nirvana of Camp Mystic, it was impossible not to think of Musk and Trump’s thoughtless, ill-planned hacking away at the professional expertise in government agencies like the National Weather Service. Six hundred NWS staffers were dispatched, including the warning coordination meteorologist in the Austin-San Antonio office, who took the DOGE buyout last spring.

The children who died at Camp Mystic, like the many more kids who will likely suffer from the disastrous turn against vaccines, and the 4.5 million children projected to die globally as a result of the USAID cuts, won’t come to life again in Trump’s next season. They’re gone for good. The essential truth of long-form television is that even the best series – Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos – can only end, effectively, with mass death and unanticipated disaster, as events turn evilly against their own makers. They rarely achieve even the dignity of tragedy. Does even the most addicted viewer really believe that the Trump series will be blessed with a better ending?

Karma comes for everyone.