The presidential campaign for Donald Trump has denounced the much-anticipated biopic The Apprentice following its debut at Cannes and has threatened to sue the filmmakers.
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” the Trump campaign’s chief spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to Variety. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”
“As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked,” he added.
Cheung further called the film “malicious defamation.”
“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” he said.
Directed by the Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, The Apprentice debuted at the Cannes International Film Festival on Monday and has received mixed reviews, with some critics either lauding it as a bone-chilling cautionary tale while others have dismissed it as a vapid cartoon depiction of the former president that never rises beyond a cheap polemic. Critics have been especially divided over a particular scene later in the film that shows Trump assaulting and raping his ex-wife, Ivana Trump. From The Guardian:
The scene, which occurs near the end of The Apprentice, depicts Trump reacting with fury after Ivana disparages his physical appearance. “You have a face like a fucking orange,” she tells him. “You’re getting fat, you’re getting ugly, and you’re getting bald.” The future president is then shown forcing his wife to the floor and raping her. “Did I find your G-spot?” he asks in the film.
In her 1990 divorce deposition, Ivana Trump described a similar assault that she said occurred shortly after her husband’s scalp-reduction surgery. She claimed that Trump pushed her to the floor and pulled out handfuls of her hair. Ivana initially described what followed as a rape, but later walked back on the claim. In a 1993 statement, she said, “On one occasion during 1989, Mr Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently towards me than he had during our marriage. As a woman I felt violated … I referred to this as a rape, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
The former president said in the divorce proceedings that Ivana’s assertions were “obviously false.” Ivana Trump died in July 2022 and her body is buried on the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Despite its debut at Cannes and it being a hard anti-Trump film, The Apprentice has not yet scored a U.S. Distributor and some critics have been brutal in their reviews.
“The monstrosity here is almost sentimental, a cartoon Xeroxed from many other satirical Trump takes and knowing prophetic echoes of his political future,” wrote Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.
“Clipped from the start and increasingly uncertain of its purpose as it fumbles toward the Trump we know, this origin story certainly isn’t as painful to watch as the future that it portends has been to endure, but it’s every bit as banal and unnecessary,” wrote David Ehrlich for IndieWire.
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
