Of course, critics of Reagan conveniently overlooked the fact that Reagan had a very strong "non-acting" background that made him a terrific choice for president.
Now yes, Donald Trump had a reality TV show but it was only a small part of what he did during his lifetime of building companies and developing real estate in probably the most challenging real estate market in the world (NYC).
By the way, I think Trump's TV experience helps him communicate and connect with the American people in the same way that Reagan's movie/radio experience helped him.
Not a bad thing.
The TV time that Donald had allowed him to have a presence in folks consciousness and allowed them to form and have opinions of him long before he decided to do the run for President... and its because of this the usual “gotcha” crap didn’t work on him.
When he would do something that could be portrayed as a gotcha moment, folks already had an opinion of him, so they would not let that one event redefine him. Most politicians the general public knows nothing about, so it is very easy to influence or define them in the press because no one knows who they are... so one single moment is all it takes to create a definition of them. They couldn’t do that to Trump, and it wasn’t from lack of trying.
Yes that is how I remember it, people want to act like everyone supported Reagan and his detractors were few. That is not the truth of how it was.