Former President Donald Trump has turned American politics into an "Apprentice" style game show where his loyalists compete for survival, columnist Charles Blow wrote for The New York Times.
This comes amid reports that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard are now surrogates for Trump and potentially could be members of his 2024 transition team if he wins. Neither have been Republicans for most of their lives but have praised Trump.
It's far from the first time Trump made former critics grovel at his feet, wrote Blow.
"Many of Trump’s Republican primary challengers from 2016 and 2024 became sycophants, some of them gushing over him at last month’s Republican National Convention. Some of his most vocal critics in Congress have become his confidants, like Senator Lindsey Graham, who once called Trump a 'race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.' Even his own running mate, JD Vance, once wrote that the former president 'is cultural heroin' and behind closed doors called him 'America’s Hitler.'"
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Trump, if anything, delights that he is surrounded by people whose "convictions are hollow," wrote Blow, since they can be manipulated and he can lay the groundwork for his reality show style of politics.
"In his political career, Trump has turned the Republican Party — and much of Washington — into his real-life game of 'The Apprentice,' with various figures making expedient alliances, trying desperately to avoid elimination and all competing for his approval. Washington, to Trump, is a survivalist game, and in it, compromising oneself is a small price to pay for survival," wrote Blow.
And yet you needn't feel sorry for those who bow to him, he said.
"In the end, in this game there are no victims. The pawns all play willingly," wrote Blow.
"Washington, by some measures, is the most important city in the country. By others, it is the shallowest," wrote Blow. "Trump has exposed many of the city’s players as apostates and built his Republican Party with these people at the core."
