About 17 million Americans watched Thursday night as Donald Trump chose his next “apprentice” in a three-hour television special on NBC. And even that number – more Americans than bought Bill Clinton’s memoir or saw Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” in theaters – probably understates the significance of the television program.

Thursday’s show featured a “studio” audience in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, a destination spot for high culture that was taken over for the evening by Mr. Trump and his would-be apprentices. NBC’s corporate parent, General Electric, is one of America’s largest companies. And the program is particularly popular among the younger demographic that will influence America’s future.

So what was all the fuss about? Viewers saw Mr. Trump hire Kelly Perdew, who triumphed over the 17 other candidates in the course of the season-long reality television show. And who is Mr. Perdew? A West Point graduate who completed the Army’s ranger training and, according to the “Apprentice” Web site, served two years as a military intelligence officer.

“My military experience will really help me,” Mr. Perdew told Entertainment Weekly.

In promotional material on the show’s Web site, Mr. Perdew says that if he had a super power he would use it to “help the thousands of brave Americans putting their lives on the line to protect our freedom.” He lists “The Fountainhead,” a libertarian tract by Ayn Rand, as among his favorite books.

On Thursday’s climactic episode, a retired Army lieutenant colonel from Stafford, Va., Andrew Hergenrother, turned up in New York and on camera to endorse Mr. Perdew. Colonel Hergenrother’s hometown paper, the Free Lance-Star, reports that he is a veteran of Kosovo and Iraq who had worked with Mr. Perdew at Fort Ord, Calif.

In making the selection, Mr. Trump noted that business and the military are different. But he nonetheless chose Mr. Perdew as the winner of the reality show over the other finalist, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton who also had a degree from Harvard Law School.

Mr. Trump wasn’t just being patriotic – it seemed like Mr. Perdew’s military training was actually good preparation for the teamwork, competition, and improvisation needed to complete the tasks that were part of the reality show. Better preparation, even, than the training some of the other contestants had received at Ivy League universities.

There’s a contempt for Mr. Trump among certain of New York’s elites. He has unusual-looking hair and an unpolished New York accent. He’s highly leveraged, he’s in the casino business, he plasters his name on everything, and his family fortune was built on a lot of middle-income housing in Brooklyn and Queens. For an alleged billionaire, he seems to spend a lot of time either going bankrupt or narrowly staving it off. And won’t he date someone his own age?

But capitalism turns out to be a remarkably egalitarian enterprise, which is why all those Ivy League graduates were competing for a job with Mr. Trump and why so many Americans were watching them. The contempt for Mr. Trump among this city’s elites has had its parallels at moments in American history, particularly during and after the Vietnam War, in a contempt for the American military.

Some of the same people who disdain Mr. Trump think of the army as a place for homophobic “rednecks” or a place for individuals who can’t get into college or who couldn’t afford college if they could get in. Or as a place for would-be war criminals to go fight “Bush’s War” or “Mc-Namara’s War” – any war but America’s war. There was a time, in other words, when the military in this country was vilified rather than admired.

This derision still exists in some corners of America, some faculty lounges and student centers and cafes, and even some houses of worship in neighborhoods near campus. But it is a minority view. A lot of those who once turned up their noses at Mr. Trump now live or work or shop or dine in buildings that his company owns. A lot of those who once scorned the military are, since September 11, 2001, increasingly aware that American soldiers are protecting them from a real enemy.

And Thursday night’s “Apprentice” episode and the audience it drew are at least one signal that on the home front in the current war, there’s a strong reservoir of respect for the military. It’s not without reason.