To the Editor:

Re “The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV,” by James Poniewozik (Sunday Review, Sept. 8):

The Trump White House is not a presidency; it’s a reality show, with its host needing constant and ever-increasing attention through coverage of his every utterance and every action. Reality shows can be very popular and draw large audiences. But they eventually run their course. Sooner or later the audiences dwindle and the broadcaster takes the show off the air.

While the Trump show will end at some point, given the damage that is being done to our institutions and our planet, that it do so later rather than sooner might not be good enough. If the media would just stop replaying his every tweet, broadcasting his every staged utterance, and following his every movement to give him yet more attention, more television exposure, President Trump would quickly suffer the same fate the character played by Andy Griffith did in Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd” — an overnight sensation who ended up pathetically playing to applause machines because no humans wanted to watch or listen to him anymore.

But pinning the blame only on the media would be unfair. As long as the mainstream media (like CNN, MSNBC and the major networks) continue to garner enhanced ratings, they will not stop feeding the beast who occupies our White House. Hence, it’s up to us to stop watching.

Eugene D. Cohen

Phoenix

To the Editor:

James Poniewozik’s analytic description of Donald Trump as a TV character was a gift to me. It relieves me of struggling to think of him as a person. But the article also helped expand my understanding of what I see as the surrender and dissipation of our national character and culture to superficial sensation over more rational and emotionally complex gratification.