In yet more leftist election interference and another in-kind contribution to the Biden presidential campaign, a half-Iranian filmmaker, Ali Abbasi, has produced a biopic of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s early years as a real estate developer.
It’s called The Apprentice, apparently titled after Trump’s reality television program.
It would likely be unremarkable except that the timing of its release becomes obvious given its major lie about the 45th president. It depicts him raping his then-wife, the now-deceased Ivana Trump.
Understandably, Trump has threatened to sue.
The Film
“The movie is a spirited, entertaining, and not overly cheeky docudrama about the years in which Donald Trump came to be Donald Trump,” a review in Variety claimed.
Remarkably, the review claimed that “it avoids cheap shots” and is “out to capture what really happened,” a curious and obvious falsehood given the scene that inspired Trump’s threat to sue.
The review observes that the film focuses on late lawyer Roy Cohn, an assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy during his crusade to root the communists out of the federal government. But it doesn’t tell readers about the rape that never happened … at least according to Ivana.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday and received, naturally, an “eight-minute standing ovation” from the hate-Trump glitterati, The Hollywood Reporter noted.
Here’s why. “The film has been described as a surprisingly humanistic portrayal of the global icon now known simply as ‘The Donald,’” THR continued, “but it also contains several disturbing and profoundly unflattering scenes, including a sequence where he rapes his first wife Ivana, gets liposuction and surgery for his bald spot, becomes addicted to diet pills, and betrays the trust of many of those closest to him.”
No wonder the worthies at Cannes loved it.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Variety that a lawsuit is forthcoming.
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Cheung said. “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.”
Continued Cheung:
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.
Trump isn’t the only person upset about it.
So is Dan Snyder — former owner of the former Washington Redskins — a Trump supporter who helped finance the project, Variety reported.
“He isn’t happy,” Variety reported of Snyder, who has donated $100,000 to Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.
He “put money into the film via Kinematics because he was under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president,” Variety reported:
Snyder finally saw a cut of the film in February and was said to be furious.
Kinematics’ lawyers were enlisted to fight the release of “The Apprentice,” and the cease-and-desist letters began flying. Kinematics president Emanuel Nuñez insists that the creative impasse between his company and the filmmakers didn’t involve Snyder. “All creative and business decisions involving ‘The Apprentice’ have always been and continue to be solely made by Kinematics. Mark and I run our company without the involvement of any other third parties.”
Sources familiar with the back and forth say Snyder took issue with multiple aspects of the film and weighed in on what should be changed. In earlier versions of the screenplay, “The Apprentice” featured a scene where Trump rapes Ivana. One insider, familiar with the scene that is in the current cut, described it as “violent” and “uncomfortable” and follows a fight between the couple. (In a 1989 divorce deposition, Ivana accused Trump of raping her. But Ivana — who died in 2022 — later refuted these claims in 2015, saying, “The story is totally without merit. Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of.”)
The scene shows Trump throwing Ivana to the floor for the nonconsensual sex.
Abbasi’s films are largely unknown outside the chattering classes of New York and Hollywood, although now that he’s portrayed Trump not only as a rapist but also as a diet-pill addict, he’s likely headed for the A-list.
At a press conference, Abbasi said he’d be happy to show the film to Trump personally.
“I don’t necessarily think that this is a movie he would dislike,” Abbasi said, THR reported:
I don’t necessarily think he would like it. I think he would be surprised, you know? And like I’ve said before, I would offer to go and meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the movie, have a screening talk and a chat afterwards, if that’s interesting to anyone at the Trump campaign.
Neither Trump nor his campaign will likely accept Abbasi’s offer.
Other Lawsuits
In March, Trump sued ABC news and talker George Stephanopolous for saying a jury in New York had found Trump liable for “rape” in the sexual abuse and defamation case brought by columnist E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll then sued Trump for defamation because he continued to deny her claims. New York’s corrupt, leftist-controlled legal system permitted the lawsuit to proceed, and a jury awarded her $83.3 million in January.
Carroll’s story sounds remarkably similar to an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Trump countersued Carroll over her claims that he raped her. A judge appointed by rape suspect and former President Bill Clinton, of course, ruled against him.
