Could all those years of Donald Trump saying "you're fired" on reality TV actually get him hired - as president?
Onetime rival Jeb Bush was fond of saying that the presumptive Republican nominee relied on "the shows" to inform his campaign.
While Bush meant it as a putdown, the former Florida governor may have been on to something.
Trump is no stranger to "the shows". He's been a frequent guest on talk shows for decades and hosted NBC's Apprentice and its spin-off Celebrity Apprentice for 14 seasons.
So have any reality TV techniques crept onto the campaign trail?
1. Invite an unpredictable guest
BRAVO
As seen on TV: (The Real Housewives series) If you're a Real Housewife of wherever, the cocktail party is your battlefield. And America's wealthy socialites always bring back-up - the feistier, the better. Housewives have been known to add a wildcard guest into the mix to throw their rivals off their game (and create plausibility deniability). In season one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Camille Grammer famously invited psychic medium Allison Dubois to a supposedly staid dinner party. "Your husband will never emotionally fulfil you. Ever," she told one of Grammer's flummoxed frenemies.
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As seen on the campaign trail: Trailing in the polls to Ben Carson and Ted Cruz before the Iowa caucus, Trump needed to shake things up. Enter Sarah Palin. The onetime vice-presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska emerged from the political wilderness to give the Trump campaign a shot in the arm. She endorsed Trump with a mystifying speech. "They didn't want to talk about these issues until he brought 'em up. In fact, they've been wearing a, this, political correctness kind of like a suicide vest," she said among other things. For a whole day the focus was off his rivals. (See also: Knight, Bobby; Arpaio, Joe)
