“Ratings Are My Whole Life” Trump’s Focus on Media Success Revealed in Audio Clip
(trump.com)
In an audio clip aired by MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, Donald Trump revealed his deep understanding of the media and his focus on what matters most to him: ratings. In the clip, Trump remarked, “You can be nice, or you can be mean… So, if I went back to NBC right now to do something, they would do anything I wanted to do, showbiz-wise, I’m talking about, doing a show, anything I wanted to do right now, 100%.”
He added, “Because one thing I know about that business is that I learned more about that business than anybody else could learn in a short period of time. It’s about one thing: ratings. If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world. There’s only one thing that matters: ratings…”
Trump elaborated further, stating, “You can be nice, or you can be mean. You can be evil. You can be horrible. You can be crude or elegant. There’s only one thing that matters and that’s ratings. If you don’t have ratings, it doesn’t matter.” This perspective was echoed by Ramin Setoodeh, author of the tell-all book “Apprentice in Wonderland,” who revealed that Trump had emphasized that ratings were his “whole life” during an interview, as reported by Mediaite.
“Trump is looking at a page from the Nielsen ratings published in a 2004 issue of Variety… from the week after the airing of The Apprentice’s first-season finale. It’s framed and bolted to the wall… something that seems to carry as much value to him as the U.S. Constitution, if not more… This sheet of paper comes from an America where The Apprentice was if only for a single week, the No. 1 show… ‘This is my whole life,'” recounted Setoodeh.
Setoodeh added, “And he said it with a straight face, and he meant it. And this is a former president of the United States looking back on Nielsen ratings from 20 years ago that he has framed not only in his office in Trump Tower but when I visited him in Mar-a-Lago, there’s also a copy of the Nielsen ratings framed there. Ratings are what drives him. Audience is what is important to him.”
The audio clip is from an interview the former POTUS gave at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in November 2023. The businessman-turned-politician expressed his desire to return to NBC as he recalled his days on The Apprentice. Speaking to Wallace, Setoodeh explained that it appeared as though Trump was “being wooed” to appear on television.
“I found no evidence of that. That’s the TV star in him. He wants people to see him as a TV star. A successful TV star and that’s the philosophy and way in which he views the world and the way he governs if you could call it governing,” the Variety journalist concluded, as reported by HuffPost.
