Trump’s ‘desperate’ reality-TV playbook is backfiring ahead of midterms: TV critic

Donald Trump is reaching for increasingly desperate television-style gimmicks to keep voters watching — but the backlash is exposing the limits of his showmanship, a veteran TV critic argued.Writing Thursday for Talking Points Memo, media columnist Brian Lowry compared Trump’s presidency to “an aging reality show” struggling to hold its audience with provocative casting, escalating threats and cash giveaways.“For a president who sees himself as the ultimate showman, breathing life into a tiring act has notably led to some very rare backpedaling,” he wrote.Lowry pointed to the abandoned livestreamed execution proposal, Katie Zacharia’s short-lived stint as press secretary and Trump’s promise of $5,000 payments to adults if the election goes his way.“Based on the polling, nothing really appears to be moving the needle,” Lowry told readers. “Among students of television, that really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since once a ‘show’ enters this phase, there’s often not much...