President Trump's State of the Union speech was like an Apprentice finale wrapped in an Oprah episode with more twists than Survivor

The New York Times

Last night's speech "seemed designed in part to remind Americans of the munificent Donald Trump persona molded by Mark Burnett on The Apprentice for a decade," says James Poniewozik, who wrote a book on the president's relationship with TV. Poniewozik adds: "It’s no secret that Donald Trump, just months before he ran for the job of most powerful man in the world, was hosting Season 7 of The Celebrity Apprentice. But not all his TV appearances as president have been as reality-fied as one might have expected, especially his sedate, from-the-TelePrompTer State of the Union speeches. The TV president made up for that Tuesday night with a dumbfounding, stunt-laden spectacle, less a presidential address than an Apprentice finale wrapped in an Oprah episode stuffed inside a viral YouTube video and dropped into the middle of a WrestleMania match. The speech was jammed with more twists and giveaways than a two-hour Survivor finale. President Trump awarded a young girl in the audience a scholarship. He had his wife, Melania, drape a Presidential Medal of Freedom around the paleoconservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh. He arranged a reunion between a deployed soldier and his wife, just like the surprise-military-return videos that TV morning shows love. And all these planned moments may have been overshadowed by a drama-filled, two-part installment of The Real Politicians of D.C., co-starring his antagonist Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. Before he began his speech, he appeared to refuse her offer of a handshake; after he finished, she ripped up her copy of it on camera. Neither of them, it seems, came there to make friends."