Reality TV’s power to warp reality became manifest when somebody in a crowd of gawkers handed Donald Trump a single dollar bill on the steps of the New York State Court building in lower Manhattan on the afternoon of Aug. 17, 2015.

Anyone aware of Trump’s actual finances, as reflected by his numerous bankruptcies, might have imagined that the self-described billionaire was being mocked. He had already been humbled by being required to report for jury duty after ducking it for nine years.

But the producers of The Apprentice had transformed him from a hustler operating out of an office with chipped furniture and musty-smelling carpet into a mogul, a fabulously wealthy demigod of business who alternately anointed and fired aspirants from a gleaming boardroom set designed by the producers of Survivor.

Among people who accepted the TV reality as real, Trump had come to represent money itself. And when he was handed the bill, he took out a pen, knowing without being told that he was being asked to autograph it.

He handed the bill back with the deliberately distinctive signature he has since affixed to a host of executive orders in his real-life role as president, which, unfortunately, is reality at its most consequential.

Now, in a second term made all too real with bullying and bullets and bombs, Trump has decided he wants his signature on ALL paper currency,........

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