Media career of Donald Trump

This article is part of a series about Donald Trump
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Before declaring his first run for office in 2015, Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the president-elect, pursued celebrity throughout his highly publicized real estate career and prolific appearances on television. His extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner, and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have made him a well-known public figure in American life for nearly half a century.

Trump released several ghostwritten books, most prominently The Art of the Deal (1987). Starting in the 1990s, he was a regular guest on the Howard Stern Show and other talk shows, joined the professional wrestling company World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment, and made several cameo film and TV appearances. From 2004 to 2015, Trump hosted The Apprentice, a reality show on NBC in which contestants competed on business-related tasks. He later co-hosted The Celebrity Apprentice, in which celebrities competed to win money for charities.

In the media, Trump is a two-time Emmy Award–nominated personality, he made appearances as a caricatured version of himself in television series and films (e.g. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Zoolander, The Nanny, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Drew Carey Show, Sex and the City, Days of Our Lives, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.), and as a character (The Little Rascals). Donald Trump has also been alluded to or mentioned in many shows and films he has not appeared in. He has been the subject of comedians (most prominently as the subject of Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump), Flash cartoon artists, and online caricature artists. Trump also had his own daily talk radio program called Trumped!.

Trump also appeared in a number of television commercials for Pizza Hut. The first of these commercials aired in the United States in 1995, and featured him and his ex-wife Ivana Trump promoting Stuffed Crust pizzas. The second of these commercials aired in the Australian market in 2000, and was for large 'New Yorker' pizzas the chain was promoting at the time. In 2002, Trump appeared in three McDonald's commercials featuring Grimace, for which he was paid $500,000.^[1]

Other brands that Trump appeared in commercials for included Pepsi, Macy's, Oreo, Serta, Verizon, and Visa Inc.. Trump has also been in commercials for his own products, such as Trump: The Game and Trump Steaks, and Trump provided his voice for the Activision video game Donald Trump's Real Estate Tycoon. All of these commercials aired between the 1980s and the 2010s.

Since the start of his political career in 2015, especially winning the 2016 presidential election and being inaugurated the first time in January 2017, Trump's personal celebrity was eclipsed by his public role as president or candidate. Trump continues to dominate public discourse.