For nearly 25 years, longtime Westport resident John Miller led marketing at NBC and NBCUniversal.
As part of his job, he headed the team that marketed “The Apprentice.” That’s the reality TV show that, John writes, “made Donald Trump a household name outside of New York City, where he was better known for overextending his empire and appearing in celebrity gossip columns.”
In a mid-October Facebook post, Miller described his experiences with Trump
He said he had plenty of stories. They were “revealing and disturbing … too many to go into here.”
He then posted to LinkedIn. That story went viral.
US News & World Report reached out to Miller. They other day, they published Miller’s op-ed.
It begins: “I want to apologize to America. I helped create a monster.”
To sell the show, he writes,
we created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty. That was the conceit of the show. At the very least, it was a substantial exaggeration; at worst, it created a false narrative by making him seem more successful than he was.
In fact, Trump declared business bankruptcy four times before the show went into production, and at least twice more during his 14 seasons hosting. The imposing board room where he famously fired contestants was a set, because his real boardroom was too old and shabby for TV.
Trump may have been the perfect choice to be the boss of this show, because more successful CEOs were too busy to get involved in reality TV and didn’t want to hire random game show winners onto their executive teams. Trump had no such concerns. He had plenty of time for filming, he loved the attention and it painted a positive picture of him that wasn’t true.
That’s just the start of Miller’s piece.
He calls his team’s “highly exaggerated image” of Trump “‘fake news’ that we spread over America like a heavy snowstorm.
“I never imagined that the picture we painted of Trump as a successful businessman would help catapult him to the White House.”
In his interactions with Trump, Miller found him “manipulative, yet extraordinarily easy to manipulate.”
John Miller
The NBC executive calls him “thin-skinned,” averse to fact-checking, and exhibiting questionable judgment. (One example: Trump pitched an idea of season 4 for “The Apprentice”: a team of Black players competing against a team of whites.)
Despite his successful marketing job, Miller says, “we also did irreparable harm by creating the false image of Trump as a successful leader. I deeply regret that. And I regret that it has taken me so long to go public.”
He concludes:
I spent 50 years successfully promoting television magic, making mountains out of molehills every day. But I say now to my fellow Americans, without any promotional exaggeration: If you believe that Trump will be better for you or better for the country, that is an illusion, much like “The Apprentice” was.
Even if you are a born-and-bred Republican, as I was, I strongly urge you to vote for Kamala Harris. The country will be better off and so will you.
Miller was interviewed on CNN and MSNBC. Vanity Fair picked up the story.
A clip on TikTok has been viewed over 2 million times.
Steve Schmidt — the former Republican campaign strategist turned Never Trumper — interviewed Miller for 40 minutes.
Many readers and viewers praised Miller. But there was plenty of criticism — and not only from Trump’s supporters. Those who oppose the former president wondered why Miller took so long to speak up.
Tomorrow, the final votes will be cast. Will the one-time “Apprentice” star, and former President of the United States, be renewed for another 4 years?
Stay tuned.
To read John Miller’s full US News & World Report story, click here. To see a social media post, click here.
