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A few weeks ago, Amazon Prime quietly released “The Million Dollar Pitch Competition,” a one-hour special best described as “Shark Tank” meets the federal government by way of several men of steel. Produced by the Small Business Administration, “Million Dollar Pitch” introduces us to five mom-and-pop companies, each of whom compete in front of a panel of judges for portions of a million-dollar purse, which they will use to grow the American Dream.
It might not surprise you, in the context of the current White House administration, to learn that America dreams mostly of metal. All five contestants work in manufacturing: Springs. Widgets. Wires. Welding. Materials that “keep our soldiers safe.”
The fastest-growing U.S. industry is home health care, but “Million Dollar Pitch” is not the kind of reality show that wants to feature underpaid women diligently preventing bedsores for $12.75 an hour. “Million Dollar Pitch” is the kind of show that wants to explore how a red-blooded man from middle America can stay up late Googling “tube bending” and turn that into a God-loving dynasty.
The host is Dean Cain, i.e. 1990s television Superman. The judges are Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, real estate investor Grant Cardone and rapper Nicki Minaj. There is a guest appearance involving Dr. Oz, the Medicare and Medicaid administrator. He performs a skit with a cartoon strand of DNA, which is meant to represent how small business runs through the bloodstream of America, but which instead gives off the vibe of the “Jurassic Park” video that Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern watch on the doomed island theme park just before the dinosaurs start eating people.
The contestants are earnest and prepared. The set looks teleported from Culver City, Calif. The total experience of “Million Dollar Pitch,” as Cain describes it: “Three industry titans, a live studio audience, the Small Business Administration administrator and the president of the United States.”
Which, when you think about it, is both the beginning of a pretty good joke about who walks into a bar and a pretty good recap of this current season of America.
If “The United States” were a television show, what would it look like? A Ken Burns documentary? A twisty whodunit? A farce?
The Trump administration has spent a good chunk of 2026 showing us its answer to that question. To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, various Cabinet officials touted the work of their agencies via reality shows that would feel pleasantly at home on TLC.
The Transportation Department, headed by former “Real World” star Sean P. Duffy, launched a family-friendly travelogue called “The Great American Road Trip.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, launched the MAHA-friendly cooking series, “The Real Food Show”; the latest episode features Lou Ferrigno agreeably cooking steak and listening to a chef extol the virtues of butter.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship — showcasing the Defense Department — came to the White House lawn for “Freedom 250,” a pay-per-view night that presented cage fighting as the natural successor to America’s great military victories. Cue the soldiers of Antietam thanking their lucky stars they never had to deal with Justin Gaethje’s spinning elbow; cue Patrick Henry rallying the delegates to the Second Virginia Convention by imploring, “Give me liberty, or give me cauliflower ear.”
Ha, just kidding. Cauliflower Ear is what we’re making next week on “The Real Food Show.”
The Homeland Security Department was represented not by a reality show, but with clips set to music: N SYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” or Semisonic’s “Closing Time” or Ariana Grande’s “Bye,” all playing over footage of immigrants, handcuffed and shepherded onto planes for deportation.
The most disorienting of these videos was one that interspersed cartoon clips from Pokémon with gritty footage of ICE raids. “Gotta catch ‘em all!” a jubilant voice sings as rows of alleged undocumented immigrants sit morosely in the grass. Without exception, the detainees featured in this video appear docile and compliant, their T-shirts and gym shorts ludicrously outmatched by the ICE officials’ riot gear.
To me these videos had the opposite of their intended effect. They did not make ICE officers look cool. Watching the clips felt as though you had gone to a concert that advertised Wagner’s Ring Cycle and then it turned out the only available instruments were two tambourines and a slide whistle.
But maybe you work with what you have.
I watched and wrote about each of these shows individually when they were released, along with other less formalized televised celebrations of the semiquincentennial anniversary: the launch of Trump TV; the inaugural Patriot Games, in which teenagers from around the country were flown to Ohio to publicly engage in a prolonged gym class.
Some of the shows were polished, some of them were absolute meshugaas. But as the series are winding down — no further agencies have announced reality shows, though it boggles the mind that Housing and Urban Development never tapped Chip and Joanna Gaines — I find myself trying to make sense of the oeuvre as a whole.
What, exactly, had we been watching?
These on-screen productions are not President Donald Trump’s off-the-cuff televised rallies. They were planned, produced and curated to reflect the country at this moment in American history. They are what the White House might present to extraterrestrials as an introduction to our culture, what might be buried in the time capsule next to the algae-riddled Reflecting Pool.
“Join us in a front-row seat to the American story,” encouraged the website for “The Great American Road Trip,” and that’s exactly what these shows were trying to do. Tell a story of America. Solidify America’s brand.
The brand is not necessarily a cohesive one. America is a land of unparalleled ingenuity and independence (“Million Dollar Pitch”) populated by people who don’t know how to make eggs (“Real Food”).
America needs to eat much more real food, entirely eliminating processed garbage, and a key way to do this is to consume Monster Energy drinks (“Freedom 250″).
America’s law enforcement officers have the studliest jobs in the universe; come apply to work with them (ICE videos), and also cops are incredibly unhealthy and prone to heart disease (“Real Food”). Put some beef tallow on it, and it should be fine.
America’s Founding Fathers were wise men who knew everything (“The Great American Road Trip”), so we who feel unmoored should turn to the institutions they founded, except for Harvard. That place was founded in 1636, but it’s a hellscape that should be avoided like the plague (“The Great American Road Trip”).
America just needs to do more fermenting, RFK Jr. tells us again and again. America is corporate-sponsored. It runs on Bud Light and cryptocurrency and Starlink internet. America needs Scotts Miracle-Gro.
While I have been trying to come up with a string theory of America, as told by the Trump administration’s reality shows, my algorithm keeps serving me other videos that feel uniquely, relentlessly American.
I’ve fallen into a vortex, for example, of tired homemakers who are trying to get out of financial trouble by making micropayments to their collectors based on social media engagement. (Their husbands bought big trucks, but their husbands never appear on camera.) They promise that every time they get a click or like, they will pay an eighth of a penny toward the debt.
I keep seeing videos of health influencers who seem so sweetly earnest until it turns out it’s all an ad for MenuFit and its personalized restaurant recommendations. Juxtaposed with videos of food influencers who are going to show you how to cook a whole dinner with the three withered potatoes from the food pantry because payday isn’t until Friday and their kids are hungry now. You can cut the beef with lentils. You can see if the food pantry has applesauce.
Then the next food influencer reel is a private chef working out of the most exquisite Beverly Hills kitchen, whose clients have commanded him to make a caviar pie.
The subtext of all of these is, get me out of here. The subtext is, I’m pretending this is fine, but don’t you see that something is odd here? Smash that follow button.
I’ve spent the year watching America, in one form or another, and I am constantly amazed by how jarring America is. How cheerfully we do the most humiliating things. How going into massive debt is normal, and asking strangers to help you pay it off is normal, and caviar and old potatoes are normal, and we are desperate for connection, and Nicki Minaj gets to decide whether your business grows or withers.
Whatever you think of the Trump administration’s television shows, they perfectly capture that tonal incongruence, and maybe they helped invent it. The Pokémon-scored ICE videos are not tone-deaf, they are pitch-perfect for what seems to be their goal: to present migrants not as people but as points in a video game. The product placement in “Freedom 250″ is not unseemly, it is the point. “Keep reality TV on Bravo,” Barack Obama said at a Georgia rally a few days ago. “Leave it to the professionals. We don’t need it in the White House.”
But, of course, we’re all professionals now, living in a world in which we daily perform and witness real things that in another context would feel divorced from reality.
My editor sent me a video of a young woman interviewed at a protest in Cleveland. She had the classic beauty of a Botticelli, and she was wrapped in an American flag. “It is your civic duty to care about what’s going on. I don’t care whether you are Democratic or Republican,” she implored the camera. “You have a living document that lives and breathes for the people. … This Capitol building? People are supposed to come here and represent us. And they won’t. So I will represent me!”
“I believe this will be considered one of the most important videos in US history from this time,” noted the X account that posted the video, and the clip truly was breathtaking, so naturally my editor and I assumed she must be AI.
But back to “The Million Dollar Pitch Competition.”
“The U.S. Small Business Administration does not endorse any business, product or service featured in this program,” a notice informs us at the beginning, which seems like an odd message for a reality show hosted by the Small Business Administration. (The money, apparently, was donated by a business management platform called Clover and is shown in cash form, shrink-wrapped in the back of a truck.)
The contestants talk about how much they love the Small Business Administration. They talk about how they believe in giving back, how they are volunteer firefighters as well as businessmen. “Build something,” one manufacturer from Iowa tells the judges. “Share the opportunity, and pass it on.”
“Our Momma didn’t raise any quitters,” another contestant affirms.
Then the judges are shown traveling to the White House for inspiration and guidance. To hear from the boss-in-chief how they should go about choosing a winner. “With ‘The Apprentice,’ I had a very good term that I used,” Trump tells them in the Oval Office. “You’re Fired.”
“Iconic,” Nicki Minaj replies.
By the time I watched that Oval Office part of the show, I’d just heard Obama refer to Trump’s White House decor as “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” and that’s the phrase that was running through my head. It seemed so apt for the country these days. The tackiness tinged with malevolence, the malevolence tempered by fifty kinds of cheesecake and an egg-roll sampler platter. We might find beauty in Jackson Hole with Duffy; we might conduct an ICE raid for the lulz.
We might award $1 million to some hardworking small-business owners. Why not.
The president of the United States sends the industry titans back to the live studio audience, and the SBA administrator awaits with Superman. Someone’s getting some money today, donated by a corporation and waiting in the back of a truck where, to be honest, it doesn’t fill the back as impressively as you imagine producers originally hoped it would. But someone’s going home with it anyway.
The winner is announced, the music swells. Confetti rains from the sky.
The post Trump’s reality TV administration reveals the real America — and we’re a mess appeared first on Washington Post.
