Book Review: “Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America”

Television critic James Poniewozik’s book examines the ways in which Donald Trump and television have fractured our republic.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, but the man is one of the most mass mediated presidents in the history of the office. He’s everywhere you look. His tweets are utterances of national importance; news outlets of all stripes — liberal, conservative and in the middle — give him hours of free time. In his book, Audience of One: Donald Trump Television, and the Fracturing of America, famed television critic James Poniewozik shows how trends in television and American culture made possible Trump’s rise, and how we can contend with the reality in which we now live.

Beginning with Trump’s birth — which happened to coincide with the advent of television — Poniewozik follows Trump through the various decades of his public life. We see how, from the very beginning, Trump’s entire understanding of the world (and, quite possibly, himself) was shaped by his encounters with television. Very quickly, Trump and television became a sort of symbiotic organism, each one feeding off of the other: Trump, as Poniewozik puts it, the eager student who eventually becomes the vessel…