I don't know what it is about the US media's obsession with self-obsessed flashy business people. Up until the Enron failure (the Republicans previous example of failed business policy) CNN used to broadcast an annoying show that featured big name CEOs and their life story. Somehow that show disappeared when too many of their featured guests started to receive indictments though the problem could have also been related to the sponsor of the show - Anderson Consulting - being connected to some of the troubled businesses such as Enron.
It was an act of mercy when that show was cut but that did not stop the hot run of Donald Trump and The Apprentice. What anyone could ever see in that program was a mystery to me but it was hard to argue against its commercial success. As with the old narcissistic CNN program "leaders", Trump can't live up to his own hype.
From Dubai to Chicago, from Atlantic City to Aberdeen, the host of the US version of The Apprentice is scaling back his ambitions for global domination, trying to fend off furious bankers and facing new questions from political opponents.
These are grim echoes of the past for a man who, during the recession of the early-Nineties, was forced to put large chunks of his business into bankruptcy, and even teetered on the edge of financial ruin. His re-emergence from that disaster is such a source of personal pride that he even sued the author of a book that estimated his wealth in mere millions, rather than billions, of dollars. The official tally – from Forbes magazine, which is the unofficial arbiter of these things – is that Mr Trump was worth $3bn (£2bn) at the last count, but that was before a string of disasters that was still unfolding yesterday.
It emerged that the Trump Organisation and its partners in Dubai were mothballing work on a 62-storey steel and glass skyscraper on one of the palm tree-shaped artificial islands in the Arabian Gulf. The development was meant to be a hotel and residential complex boasting Norman Foster bathtubs and furniture by the Italian designer Poltrona Frau, and Mr Trump had personally earmarked one of the penthouse suites. But demand has collapsed along with the fortunes of the wealthy that had flocked to Dubai in the boom.
