I Trust Donald Trump Because He Fired Me

It went on for hours. I went to the meeting knowing that my prospects weren’t great. Still, I fought. I appealed to his ego. I reframed my decisions against what I knew about his own past actions. I attacked my enemy relentlessly. That I had a legit beef helped, too. Trump seemed to come around.

And, yet. He fired me.

I was sent out of the room twice. I knew this meant he was torn and therefore consulting advisors. He had gone into the meeting briefed that I was the most obvious firee. Yet, as we parried back-and-forth, I was getting through and changing his mind. It seemed that, instinctively, he liked was siding with me.

And, yet. He fired me.

This, of course, wasn’t real real life. It was The Apprentice. I was a contestant. The meeting was the “boardroom” segment. The advisors were the show's producers.

In firing me, Trump heeded the advice of his experts — the producers much more involved in the show than himself. I only knew for sure that this is what happened later. After it was all over, and the show had aired, two different folks there recounted the events of Trump’s acquiescence.

I woke up (I’m in another time zone in South Asia) to a Washington Post news alert that Trump was considering military action in Syria. With my wicked jet lag, I’m basically unable to sleep more (at night, anyway). So I listen to podcasts hoping they’d help me drift off. They don’t. Instead I listen to things like Fresh Air and Terry Gross discuss a recent Huffington Post Highline article about how Trump’s impulsiveness could trigger a war with Russia.

As I laid awake and thought about all this, my mind drifted back to my time with him. Much of it ended up being in various boardrooms. I watched as he grilled contestants for information, impulsively fired contestants for trivial reasons (but probably good TV), and weighed conflicting counsel. While the first Apprentice winner, Bill, argued passionately on my behalf, ultimately he sided with the producers.

In hindsight, that was the right call. He wasn’t really hiring someone to work for him. The job was a sham. He was producing a TV show. I know now that 24-year-old-surya made pretty shitty TV. I was too anxious about how I’d be perceived, too caught up in trying to control everything. I didn’t have the wisdom to realize that with endless hours of footage, I’d never be able to control how I was portrayed. I was on a fool’s errand, and I didn’t realize it. My penance, that he ultimately executed against his own instincts, was firing me. It made sense in the context of the episode and it got a problematic reality TV pawn out of the way. Ultimately, the right call (though the show was doomed, anyway).

So: here we are. It’s been more than ten years since that day. Yet, its recollection gives me hope that our president is capable of listening to wise counsel when it counts.

OK, real talk: I don’t trust him. I’m just saying I trust him *more* than I would have if I hadn’t spent time with the man and had this look.

Let’s hope.