I’ll get to my brief one (and only) private chat with Donald Trump in a moment. But first a quick review of the book I’m currently reading.

You may have heard mention somewhere of “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.” I seriously doubt the book, by two Pulitzer Prize winners from (the failing) New York Times has got anything beyond a sneering mention within the Trump bubble. But outside of it, in the reality-based world, it is already considered the most definitive account of Trump’s family/psychological roots, finances and myth creation.

Serious reviews are plentiful, so I won’t belabor what so many others have already said. In summary the key takeaway of Trump the rich child-turned-celebrity tycoon is that he has always been what he is today, which, in the parlance of our times, as The Dude would say, is “a dick.” A dick as a cushioned rich kid with a cold, aggressive father. A dick as a young adult already pretending to be something far better and more accomplished than he put any effort into actually being. A dick as a burgeoning developer living off over $400 million of his father’s money, losing millions more and already screwing over contractors and business partners. A dick as a relentlessly self-promoting hedonistic tabloid celebrity. And yeah, a dick with a megalomaniacal impulse towards politics.

In short … a dick. Plain and pretty simple.

The authors, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, have been on the Trump finances/myth creation story for almost 10 years now. They broke the first story about his taxes — the 1995 return that showed he had lost more money, over $950 million dollars, than any individual in America that year — and the blockbuster 2018 Times story that laid out the layers of outright fraud and tax evasion his father and he used to build the fortune that Trump quickly squandered on failed casinos and absurd over-spending on vanity projects.

All that is fascinating for the level of character detail the two provide. But the heart of the book and explosive moment of Trump’s mythology is the section where he meets the producer of what would become “The Apprentice” and how that guy, Mark Burnett, with a team of skilled set designers and editors, created the Trump that Trump went on to convince tens of millions of Americans he is … as starkly opposed to the silly, bankruptcy-burdened caricature Burnett & Co. discovered when they first met him at Trump Tower.

So it was a warm night at Universal City out in LA. It was the Television Critics Summer Press Tour with the garish amusement park as the evening’s setting for NBC to hype its fall shows. It’s an event where sit-com stars, producers and network execs submit to mingling with badly dressed newspaper writers from the hinterlands and affect much bonhomie over free drinks and sumptuous buffets.

I was alone at a linen-covered bistro table nursing a beverage and picking at a platter of three-star chow when I looked up and saw Trump standing next to me, searching the horizon for someone more recognizable (and valuable) than yours truly.

“Having a good time?,” I remember asking, thinking that for a billionaire mega-developer throwing up gigantic buildings all over the planet, this dog-and-pony shtick with the mewling press had to be a grim chore.

“It’s ok. I don’t mind it,” said Trump.

Since he didn’t immediately move on to either NBC boss Jeff Zucker or the sit-com co-star hottie in the low-cut dress, I dug down for whatever I could find on Donald Trump, the builder-developer-turned-reality TV host. Remembering him best for the constant satirical savaging he got from Spy magazine back in the ’80s, I put that in my back pocket and instead asked him a developer-based question about the then skyrocketing price of steel brought on by China’s surge of construction.

He said something about the way China was cornering the market on steel and how bad it was for guys like him, and then he moved on with a parting, “See ya.”

And that was that. Not much at all. Perfunctory as hell. But as he ambled off, in no big hurry, all I could think was, “Isn’t that guy … you know … busy? As in too busy for this?” I mean, where does he find time to do a night glad-handing dorky writers much less a cheesy weekly TV show? Who’s running things back at headquarters?

“Lucky Loser” explains in detail why Trump was there in Universal City that night. For all intents and purposes he was broke. He desperately needed the check he was getting from Burnett and NBC. He wasn’t really building anything, so much as concocting screwy licensing deals that would slap his name on buildings other people were developing.

But all that changed — dramatically — with Burnett’s “reimagining” of Trump the billionaire tycoon. The tycoon millions of viewers saw in ‘The Apprentice’s” now notoriously fictitious opening credit sequence, with Trump in his chopper suggesting every bit the image of The Man Who Built Manhattan.

For me the Trump Myth Creation story really begins there. It begins with the millions of viewers who quite simple-mindedly believed what Burnett created for them. For many other adults looking at a TV show, “Law & Order” or “The Rockford Files” depending on how far you want to go back, their minds shift into a “a suspension of disbelief.” They accept what they see as a theatrical concoction and go along for the escapist pleasure of the experience. But they don’t believe. They don’t accept it as reality.

But then the average TV drama doesn’t have actors/performers springboarding out into the public sphere continuing the on-screen performance. James Garner never walked around Hollywood pretending he was Jim Rockford. And I seriously doubt Gary Oldman drops into is favorite London pub trying to convince the other patrons he is Jackson Lamb from ‘Slow Horses.” People like that leave the act, the pretense, on the sound stage.

But not Trump. The Trump Mark Burnett created was the Trump Trump desperately wanted be. What Burnett and NBC were selling was the Trump Trump desperately wanted the tabloid/reality TV inhaling public to believe he was. Namely, the unequivocally successful, billionaire Trump. Not the bankrupt, cartoonishly self-aggrandizing figure serious New York developers and bankers knew him to be and wanted nothing to do with. And not the fading, fattening, down-on-his-luck playboy in dated, funky smelling offices Burnett and team encountered at Trump Tower.

The point here is that it worked. Beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings. Not just a hit TV show. But a myth that bored so deep into the minds of tens of millions of celebrity-obsessed American adults that they believed, accepted and embraced Trump as a master class billionaire. And therefore they believed the famous character in the lavish office they knew from TV was someonat who could “fix” everything they saw as wrong with America.

The suspension of disbelief, or lack thereof I should say, has proven so facile, powerful and seductive it could well be on a verge of shifting the course of the United States, Ukraine and the world for the next generation.

Well done, Mark Burnett.