President Donald Trump’s reality show has faced another week of glitches.
From protesters crashing his lavish Washington, D.C. dinner with billionaire pal David Ellison to Joe Rogan calling himself “politically homeless” even after getting invited to the White House, the 79-year-old president’s powerful cultural and media alliances are showing cracks.
But the reality TV president of The Apprentice fame may be too isolated to even notice—or is outright refusing to acknowledge reality, Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty and political correspondent Sarah Ewall-Wice said in an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast.
On Thursday night, as the presidential motorcade pulled up to the Institute for Peace for Trump’s dinner with the Paramount Skydance CEO, protesters gathered to speak out against the media giant’s impending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
“We’re gathered here together tonight [because] in the building behind us, David Ellison is hosting a dinner to honor President Trump, a dinner that’s designed to cement the Ellisons to the president in their years-running corrupt merger scheme,” Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin told the crowd.
“That really shows where things go wrong for Donald Trump when it comes to reality, versus what Donald Trump—the reality TV president and the reality TV star of many years—actually gets,” Ewall-Wice said.
But Trump is also surrounded by yes men who help him ignore reality, she added.
“There was a lot being reined in during the first administration; there were some guardrails. The guardrails are completely gone, and so he can live in this false reality where he couldn’t—last time, where he’d get some reality checks, per se. This time, he’s not getting those reality checks,” she said.
“He’s being given the information he wants to hear. He’s being told what he wants to hear. And every so often when something comes up that he doesn’t want to hear—well, he can then turn around and do whatever he wants anyway. So it goes back to the president living in his false world,” Ewall-Wice continued.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s not just protesters who are speaking out against Trump.
Rogan, the 58-year-old podcaster who boosted Trump’s popularity in the manosphere, has been speaking out against the administration on a variety of issues, from the war with Iran to the president’s bizarre Jesus-inspired Truth Social posting spree.
Despite his comments, Rogan still got invited to the Oval Office. He stood behind Trump as the president signed an executive order directing an expedited review of psychedelics—at Rogan’s request.
“We all respect Joe, and he’s a little bit more liberal than I am,” Trump quipped at the time. “That’s OK. I have a lot of friends that are liberal. But Joe is an amazing guy, and he wrote me a little note about this, and I had it checked out.”
Days after the event, Rogan maintained that he still considered himself “politically homeless.”
“What did Joe Rogan get? He got what he wanted,” Dougherty said. “What did Trump get? He doesn’t appear to have got anything. Reality show is beginning to crack, isn’t it?”
This weekend, Trump is expected to face his biggest adversaries: the media.
The president is attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this year after skipping it throughout his first term.
“He’s going to, one, attack the media is what we’ve been told,” Ewall-Wice said. “But he also apparently is working with comedians and trying to be funny at the same time. So maybe trying to have his reality TV show but get his point across—how much he hates the media—at the same time.”
“So it’ll be interesting to see how he receives the room when he’s faced with this harsh reality, that we will continue to do our job, no matter what,” she added.
