The Apprentice logo.

A few months after Donald Trump “won” the presidential election, I interviewed several black Republicans to ask their opinions about the president-elect. Several of them said they didn’t vote for Trump, opting to cast their votes for Independent candidate Gary Johnson, the guy who didn’t know where or what Aleppo was.

But one of them said something very insightful. He said that one thing Trump had going for him was name recognition. Because of the success of the NBC reality show, “The Apprentice,” millions of Americans envisioned Trump as a hard-charging, get-things-done CEO. And since we live in a country where many people don’t read and get all their information from the television, a lot of people believed that.

Of course, that image was false. Trump was the host of a reality TV show. Reality TV is the mutant offspring of the documentary, except in reality TV nothing is real. The moniker is an oxymoron because reality TV is about as real as professional wrestling. These shows have teams of writers and producers who craft storylines and often send “characters” on various adventures to liven up the show. But most viewers believe what they’re watching is real.

The king of the reality TV boom is Mark Burnett, creator of hits such as “Survivor” “Big Brother” and “The Apprentice.”

The New Yorker recently published a fascinating article detailing how Burnett’s “The Apprentice” played a major role in reshaping Trump’s image and making him look like a competent leader.

I watched a post-election focus group, where a black Trump supporter, said he backed the president because “he had seen him ordering people around on “The Apprentice,” and thought he could get things done!

Patrick Radden Keefe writes, “‘The Apprentice’ portrayed Trump not as a skeezy hustler who huddles with local mobsters but as a plutocrat with impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth — a titan who always seemed to be climbing out of helicopters or into limousines. ‘Most of us knew he was a fake,” Braun (an editor on ‘Survivor’) told me. ‘He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.’ Bill Pruitt, another producer, recalled, ‘We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise.’”

And since, as Chris Hedges author of “Empire of Illusion,” says many Americans are so poorly educated they can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality, a lot of people bought into Trump’s revamped image.

I watched a post-election focus group, where a black Trump supporter, said he backed the president because “he had seen him ordering people around on “The Apprentice,” and thought he could get things done!

Television is a powerful medium and too many people don’t look at it with a critical eye. How many people have been seduced by FOX News, which presents itself as a regular news channel, but is actually the communications arm of the Republican Party? Wittingly or unwittingly, “The Apprentice,” pumped hours of pro-Trump propaganda into American homes priming people to fall in love with a conman.

Trump is a television person. He once dreamed of being a Hollywood producer, and he gets all of his information from television.

Michael Wolff, author of “Fire and Fury,” said that if a piece of information was written down, it essentially didn’t exist to Trump. As president, he has staffed his White House with TV people such as former FOX News executive Bill Shine and Heather Nauert, another former FOX News anchor, who was recently appointed U.N. ambassador, even though she has no diplomatic experience. Also, former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman had two stints on “The Apprentice” and has appeared on several other reality TV shows.

Trump is also obsessed with image and has been accused of running the White House as if he’s producing a reality show. It’s all about superficial gestures, stunts, and dramatic confrontations. While this might make great TV, it’s no way to run a government.

Trump is literally the monster that TV created. So while the Russians played a major role in Trump’s ascension to the White House, you can’t discount the influence of Burnett and reality TV. TV’s worst genre helped create the worst president in history.