“I’ve gotten to like this room,” President Trump said March 23 in the White House briefing room.

If the walls had ears, they’d have been surprised to hear it. Until recently, the Trump administration had all but done away with formal press briefings, and the president preferred to talk to reporters amid the helpful din of a helicopter or in a Fox News studio.

But the briefing room has one amenity that Donald Trump, suddenly without rallies and travel appearances amid a pandemic, cannot resist: a camera.

Mr. Trump became a prime-time star through TV, a political figure through TV and a president through TV. But he has not, as president, had what he had with NBC’s “The Apprentice”: a regular TV show in which he plays an executive in control.

Now, the coronavirus briefings have given him a new, live and unfiltered daily platform before a captive national audience. True to his résumé, he has conducted them as a kind of reality TV, or rather, create-your-own-reality TV.