What Trump Means by “Great Television!”

Watch the president closely. 

He is using television as pedagogy. Trump uses television to train his troops, educate, and arm MAGA. This differs greatly from Franklin D. Roosevelt mastering radio or John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan commanding television. This is Trump turning video—whether it appears on TikTok or cable—into behavioral training.

Faced with defeat in 2020 by 7 million votes in the popular count and 302 to 232 in the electoral college, Trump declared himself the victor. Without giving his arithmetic a second thought, MAGA echoed him. Its forces joined him at the Ellipse, demanding that Congress “Stop the Steal.” 

The MAGA troops cannot say which states were incorrectly counted in 2020. They don’t need to. 

They saw Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania go for Joe Biden, the same pivotal states that went for Trump in 2016.

But they accepted, nonetheless, the loser’s cry of triumph. They trooped to the Capitol and tried to stop the electoral count. Trump said he won. MAGA, hungry for blood, acted on his words. 

What Trump tells them on television, MAGA eats whole—aping his behavior. His ownership of the Republican Party empowered each of his appointed Cabinet nominees to be approved by Congress, despite any private misgivings about the likes of Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Kash Patel. By Hollywood standards, every Trump nominee won an Oscar, no matter how unqualified or dreadful. 

This is the power of MAGA. It hears Trump speak on TV. It echoes his every word.

Why? Trump never stops using television to train his millions of supporters, telling them what to think and how to act. 

And he does it before our eyes on television. Again, we watch Trump on TV. MAGA does it to take instruction.

This winter, the president and vice president unleashed a brutal humiliation of President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

They did it in the Oval Office before the world. The smackdown was, as Trump was delighted to tell us, “Great Television.” 

They bullied the courageous Ukrainian leader and chased him from the White House, canceling follow-up meetings and sending the delegation back to Kyiv. With JD Vance as his backup, Trump treated Zelensky the way they wanted MAGA to see him treated.

Again, the Oval Office show of contempt was an object lesson. The MAGA troops saw how their hero treated Zelensky. MAGA now has it in their head precisely how to place an ugly regard not just on Zelensky but on Ukraine itself. 

The performance was remarkable, even by Trump’s standards. He was showing his Republican troops how brutally to behave, how a bully can take down the little guy on the beach.

And what a turn it made from Republican history.

In 1952, General Dwight D. Eisenhower left his post as Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to run for president. He aimed to ensure the early success of the greatest bulwark of defense against an aggressive Russia. 

In 2025, Donald Trump showed Republicans how to march alongside Josef Stalin’s Kremlin successor.

Two weeks ago, more “Great Television.”

The president went before the Congress and the American people in February. One of his goals was to soften up Social Security for the kill. Trump spoke of the 4.6 million people aged 100 to 109 getting retirement benefits, the 3.6 million aged 110 to 119 receiving monthly checks, and the 1.3 million aged 150 to 159. 

And, through every decade of Trump’s contempt for the New Deal program, Republicans clapped and cheered as if it were all true. 

This is how Trump does it. He performs these acts so MAGA will know how to act. He performs episode upon episode of Sesame Street programs, all designed to teach the MAGA troops what to believe and what to ridicule.

He matches such claims when he loses an election. 

He humiliates Zelensky, and his MAGA people learn how easy it is to mock Moscow’s victim. He makes Social Security look ridiculous and makes even Democratic retirees worry a bit more about their futures.

He is forever drilling his troops and doing it right before us.

It’s happening right there on the TV screen in front of us. Yes, Trump wants to abolish the Education Department. But he wants one of his very own to-school MAGA. 

As Trump himself decrees, it’s “Great television.”

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