Why Did Donald Trump’s Team Label ‘The Apprentice’ As ‘Garbage’ & ‘Pure Fiction’ After Its Premiere At Cannes?

A new film about Donald Trump called The Apprentice premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, garnering mostly positive reviews from critics but also prompting a legal threat from the former president. The biopic on the former US President explores Trump’s early years as an ambitious young property developer in 1970s and 80s New York.

Trump’s spokesperson condemned the film dubbing it as “garbage,” “pure fiction,” and “election interference by Hollywood elites.” According to reports, The Apprentice includes a scene depicting Donald Trump raping his first wife Ivana.  The movie’s debut coincides with Trump’s ongoing hush-money trial in New York, as he prepares for another presidential run in November.

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Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, stated that the team plans to file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.” Cheung remarked, “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”

The Apprentice, which recently premiered at Cannes, features actor Sebastian Stan as Trump. The movie’s central relationship is between Trump and Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong), the defense attorney who served as chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s Senate investigations of suspected communists.

Directed by Iranian Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, the film portrays Cohn as a longtime mentor to Trump, instructing him in the ruthless tactics of New York City politics and business.

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What is The Apprentice?

The title partly references the TV series that Trump hosted for over a decade starting in 2004. However, the film is set several decades earlier, during Trump’s rise as a real estate developer.

According to AFP, the film “paints an unflinching but nuanced portrait of the former US president.” The film, said to feature themes of “rape, erectile dysfunction, baldness, and betrayal,” begins with a sympathetic portrayal of a headstrong but naive social climber.