Donald Trump’s playbook—outrage, mythmaking, and relentless self-promotion—wasn’t born in the White House or on The Apprentice. It was forged in the tabloid wars of 1980s New York, author Jonathan Mahler argues.

The 79-year-old president is “the personification of 1980s excess”, an era during which the young developer first learned to dominate the public stage, Mahler explained on Tuesday’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast.

“What Trump does so well as a politician is build a story line,” the longtime New York Times Magazine writer said.

He argued that, contrary to the conventional belief that Trump’s rise as a master of publicity began with the reality TV show The Apprentice in 2004, the president is really a product of New York’s frenetic tabloid culture in the 1980s, when the medi

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