Naomi Klein: Trump is the First Fully Commercialized Global Brand to Serve as U.S. President
So, I think we need to understand that Trump is not playing by the rules of politics. He’s playing by the rules of branding. And, you know, there have been presidential conflicts of interest before. There have been presidents with business interests before. But there has never been a fully commercialized global brand as a sitting U.S. president. That is unprecedented.
And the reason that’s unprecedented is because this is a relatively new business model. It is—the business model that has been adopted by the Trump Organization is really not one that existed before the 1990s. It is what I called in my first book, No Logo, the hollow brand model, right? And the model comes out of the fact that in the—so, the original history of branding is you have a product—you know, maybe it was rice, maybe it was beans, maybe it was shoes—you’re a manufacturer first, but you want people to buy your product, so you brand it. You put a logo on it. You identify it with, you know, some sort of iconic image, like Uncle Ben’s or whatever it is, right? You give it a kind of personality.
.. an advertising executive who said, “Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them, and they become immune after a while.” It’s just lovely insight from a marketer, yeah, about how they see customers. So, marketing started to get more ambitious, and then you started to see these companies that position themselves as lifestyle brands. And they said, “No, we’re not product-based companies. We are in the business of selling ideas and identity.” Nike was the ultimate example of this. Nike CEO Phil Knight stepped forward and said, “We are not a sneaker company. We are not a shoe company. We are about the idea of transcendence through sports,”
.. Starbucks wasn’t a coffee company; it was about the idea of community and the third place. And, you know, Disney was family.
.. So, Trump was more of a traditional business in the 1980s. And Trump was just sort of like a guy who built buildings, but—built buildings and had a flair for marketing. But the game changer for him was The Apprentice. That’s when he got to—he realized he could enter the stratosphere of the superbrands.
.. And his business model changed. It no longer became about building the building or buying the building. That was for other people to do. He was about building up the Trump name and then selling it and leasing it in as many different ways as possible. So you’ve got the Trump water and Trump Steaks and Trump’s very so-called dodgy university.
.. Trump’s big idea, the idea at the center of his brand, is the power that comes with wealth. And so, the more powerful he is—and, of course, he happens somehow to have got himself the most powerful job in the world—that fact alone is massively increasing the value of his brand, which his sons are cashing in on busily on every front by selling that name for inflated prices.
.. this idea that we’re going to somehow catch him out, damage him by proving that he is corrupt, you know, that he treats people awfully, that’s his brand.
His brand is that he’s the boss, and he gets to do whatever he wants.
.. The Apprentice, as you so aptly describe, was really based on selling a cutthroat brand of capitalism to the American people as the way that people should be.
.. Yeah, it’s televised class war. I mean, it opens up with an image of a homeless man sleeping rough on the streets of New York, and then cuts to Trump in his limousine. And it’s basically like “Who do you want to be? The homeless guy or Trump?” Right? And so, you know, this happens. You know, the show launches at a time when people understand that this—that neoliberalism is not lifting all boats. It is this cutthroat world of winners and losers. And which one do you want to be?
.. I didn’t know that in later seasons they deported half of their contestants into tents in the backyard. They called it Trump’s trailer park. And, you know, they would overlay the sound of like howling dogs at night. And it was this idea of creating drama out of the massive inequalities of our economic system. The people who were sleeping in the backyard, who had been deported into Trump’s trailer park, would peek over the hedges to look at the people living in the mansion, you know, drinking champagne and floating around in the swimming pool, right?
.. if you play by my rules, you end up in the mansion. And it will be even sweeter because people are sleeping outside, right? Because you won.