Trump’s Attacks on Elections Began with a Lost Emmy

Trump’s fury over losing the Emmy was more than a Hollywood grievance. It previewed how he would turn personal defeat into an attack on the legitimacy of elections themselves.

Last night, in the midst of a war with Iran and Republicans fighting for their political lives in the looming midterms, President Trump made a primetime address about U.S. election vulnerabilities and to relitigate his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. With a sitting President questioning the validity of the elections and our democracy, I thought it would be useful to look back when he called into question another election: The Emmys.

In the 2000s, Trump used Hollywood and reality TV to rebuild his image and refill his coffers when his real estate empire was drowning in debt. He made an estimated $427 million with “The Apprentice” from 2004 to 2010, and its spin-off “Celebrity Apprentice,” from 2008 to 2015.

As executive producer of the popular NBC series, he was twice nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Reality-Competition Program category. In 2004 and 2005, Trump and “The Apprentice” lost to “The Amazing Race.”

Years later, Trump used social media to cast aspersions on The Television Academy’s credibility, calling its voting process “dishonest.” The accusations would eventually force the Academy to defend itself, using its own social media channels to review the detailed voting process.

Trump’s inability to accept his Emmy losses became a topic during a 2016 Presidential debate, when moderator Chris Wallace asked the then-GOP nominee if he would accept the outcome of the 2016 election. His opponent, Secretary Hillary Clinton, was prescient in her warning of what his Emmy accusations meant for our political elections.

“Every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is rigged against him,” Clinton said. “There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row [in 2006 ‘The Apprentice’ was nominated again, but Trump himself was not] and he started tweeting the Emmys were rigged against him.”

Trump interrupted Clinton, “I should have gotten it,” leading to the audience laughing, and confirming Clinton’s assertion that he believed the Emmy vote is “rigged.”

Clinton continued, “This is a mindset, this is how Donald thinks, and it’s funny, but it’s also really troubling. That is not how our democracy works. We’ve been around for 240 years, we’ve had free and fair elections, we’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them, and that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.”

In 2016, an audience laughed when Trump insisted he deserved the Emmy. Clinton understood that the grievance was not a punchline, but a warning: Trump’s faith in any democratic process extends only as far as its willingness to declare him the winner.

It’s a moment that now looks like a remarkably clear expression of his governing philosophy: Institutions are legitimate when they validate him and corrupt when they do not. After a decade of watching Trump respond to defeat, there should be no confusion about what threatens their legitimacy—or why.