‘Apprentice in Wonderland’ Review: Ramin Setoodeh Dives Into Trump’s Theatrics

APPRENTICE IN WONDERLAND: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, by Ramin Setoodeh

In 2004, when the entertainment journalist Ramin Setoodeh was 22, Newsweek assigned him to cover a new reality show starring Donald Trump. The show’s mix of product-hawking and emotional volatility was a hit; and in the years since “The Apprentice” first aired on NBC, Setoodeh would go on to become the co-editor in chief of Variety and Trump, of course, would go on to become president — arguably in large part because American audiences bought the mirage of the successful, no-nonsense businessman that Trump played on TV.

So it isn’t surprising that Setoodeh, like so many others who have done rotations in Trump’s orbit, would eventually add a volume to the ever-expanding shelf of Trump books. Setoodeh concedes that “The Apprentice” has already “been endlessly analyzed, debated, referenced and credited as a major factor” in Trump’s 2016 victory, and he promises that “Apprentice in Wonderland” will do something new: “What’s been lost in most of the conversations about the show is the show itself — not just a symbol, but a seminal moment in the history of popular culture.”

This is one of those my-book-will-be-different statements that sounds blandly unobjectionable on the face of it, but then turns out not to make much sense. “The Apprentice” was “a seminal moment in the history of popular culture” precisely because its star became president. The “show itself” was, from Setoodeh’s own recounting of it, just another reality television product: addictive, ultra-processed fare that could be churned out on the cheap. Trump’s stint in reality TV has been squeezed many times over for significance. What can this book tell us that we don’t know already?

Setoodeh did what he could to gather material. He interviewed Trump six times between May 2021 and November 2023, and talked to numerous people who worked for or appeared on the show. In other words, he had access. But access — especially when it comes to a 20-year-old reality show built around voluble people who crave attention — can yield only so much.

Most of what sources confided to Setoodeh are variations on the many stories about “The Apprentice” that have appeared over the years. We have been repeatedly told that Trump was less decisive and articulate than the show’s editors made him out to be, and that he made vulgar comments about women. (Not to mention that he was recently found liable for sexual abuse and defamation by a jury that ordered him to pay his accuser, the writer E. Jean Carroll, $83.3 million.) One “Apprentice” contestant, Jennifer Murphy, says that Trump kissed her, but that she wasn’t offended. “I think he looked at me in a way like he does his daughter,” she tells Setoodeh. “But also, I did think he had the hots for me a little bit.”