From the 1970s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in United States federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes.[1] He has also been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault,[2][3] with one accusation resulting in him being held civilly liable.[4]
In 2015, Trump's lawyer Alan Garten called Trump's legal entanglements "a natural part of doing business" in the U.S.[5][6] While litigation is indeed common in the real estate industry,[5] Trump has been involved in more legal cases than his fellow magnates Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., Donald Bren, Stephen M. Ross, Sam Zell, and Larry Silverstein combined. Much of the lawsuits were filed against patrons with debt to his casinos. Of all cases with a clear resolution, Trump was the victor 92 percent of the time.[7]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_affairs_of_Donald_Trump#:~:text=From%20the%201970s%20until%20he,over%20100%20business%20tax%20disputes.
It was the corporate media of television not the Internet that brought *rump into the limelight and kept him there despite his history, ignorance and easily discoverable shortcomings.
The Apprentice is an American reality television program that judged the business skills of a group of contestants. It ran in various formats across fifteen seasons on NBC from 2004 to 2017. The Apprentice was created by British television producer Mark Burnett,[1] and co-produced with Donald Trump, who was the show's host for the first fourteen seasons.[2] Billed as "The Ultimate Job Interview," seven of the show's seasons featured aspiring, but otherwise unknown, businesspeople who would vie for the show's prize, a one-year $250,000 starting contract to promote one of Donald Trump's properties. The show features 14 to 18 such business people who compete over the course of the season, with usually one contestant eliminated per episode. Contestants are split into two "corporations" (teams), with one member from each volunteering as a project manager on each new task. The corporations complete business-related tasks such as selling products, raising money for charity, or creating an advertising campaign, with one corporation selected as the winner based on objective measures and subjective opinions of the host and the host's advisors who monitor the teams' performance on tasks. The losing corporation attends a boardroom meeting with the show's host and their advisors to break down why they lost and determine who contributed the least to the team. Episodes ended with the host eliminating one contestant from the competition, with the words "You're fired!"
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_(American_TV_series)
For 20 years, I couldn’t say what I watched the former president do on the set of the show that changed everything. Now I can.
By Bill Pruitt
May 30, 2024 5:35 AM
On Jan. 8, 2004, just more than 20 years ago, the first episode of The Apprentice aired. It was called “Meet the Billionaire,” and 18 million people watched. The episodes that followed climbed to roughly 20 million each week. A staggering 28 million viewers tuned in to watch the first season finale. The series won an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, and the Television Critics Association called it one of the best TV shows of the year, alongside The Sopranos and Arrested Development. The series—alongside its bawdy sibling, The Celebrity Apprentice—appeared on NBC in coveted prime-time slots for more than a decade.
The Apprentice was an instant success in another way too. It elevated Donald J. Trump from sleazy New York tabloid hustler to respectable household name. In the show, he appeared to demonstrate impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth, even though his businesses had barely survived multiple bankruptcies and faced yet another when he was cast. By carefully misleading viewers about Trump—his wealth, his stature, his character, and his intent—the competition reality show set about an American fraud that would balloon beyond its creators’ wildest imaginations.
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https://slate.com/culture/2024/05/donald-trump-news-2024-trial-verdict-apprentice.html
That was one way, top down, authoritarian mass communication of T.V. not democracy of the two way instant mass communication of the Internet that created *rump front and center.
The corporate media knew their power would wane in the 1990s when they slandered Al Gore for the better part of two years with the ludicrous slander/libel of "Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet"
They a wanted a fossil fuel man to be charge so they enabled Bush the Least to power.
The corporate media wanted war with Iraq so they lied us into that as well.
They knew democracy of the Internet would also foster grass roots populism based on our dysfunctional wealth disparity which has only gotten worse since Reagan and they saw Bernie Sanders; whose strength actually came from the grass roots of the Internet as a threat, so they promoted the oligarch and faux populist *rump to power as a draw against votes for Sanders.
They kept *rump front and center giving him over a billion dollars of free T.V. just because he would do stupid things and they jumped on it.
A beast can be most dangerous when it's wounded and the corporate conglomerates and oligarchs that owned/owns the corporate media were more concerned about their bottom lines than either a public good or democracy.
That's why Elon Musk bought Twitter as well.
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