Former President Donald Trump has lashed out at the newly released film “The Apprentice,” which portrays his life and career in the 1970s and 1980s in New York City.
Trump took to Truth Social to express his disapproval of the movie. “A FAKE and CLASSLESS Movie written about me, called, The Apprentice (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully ‘bomb,'” Trump wrote. “It’s a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
He went on to complain specifically about the depiction of his relationship with his first wife, the late Ivana Trump, the mother of his three eldest children.
“My former wife, Ivana, was a kind and wonderful person, and I had a great relationship with her until the day she died. The writer of this pile of garbage, Gabe Sherman, a lowlife and talentless hack, who has long been widely discredited, knew that, but chose to ignore it,” he said.
Donald Trump delivers remarks at a campaign rally at the Santander Arena on October 9, 2024, in Reading, Pennsylvania. He has railed against a new film about his life, “The Apprentice.”
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want in order to hurt a Political Movement, which is far bigger than any of us.” Trump said.
The new movie, starring Sebastian Stan as Trump, was released on October 11. It was written by political journalist Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi.
The film depicts the beginning and the decline of Trump’s relationship with Ivana, including portraying a scene in which he allegedly raped her. Ivana alleged that Trump raped her in a 1990 court deposition during their divorce, but she later recanted the allegation in 2015.
While disavowing the allegation, Ivana explained that she once felt “violated” by Trump during sexual relations because “the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent.”
“I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense,” she added.
In an emailed statement to Newsweek, Trump’s campaign communications director Steven Cheung said: “The filmmakers now readily admit they fabricated scenes and created fake stories to fit some deranged narrative about President Trump that is completely untrue. This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”
“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should never 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
Sherman has said that all the scenes in the movie are based on records of real events.
Speaking about Ivana’s alleged rape, Sherman noted that she made the allegations “under oath,” per USA Today. “In fact, the scene she described in the divorce papers was actually far more graphic and brutal than the one we dramatized in the film.”
Cheung told Variety in May that the campaign planned to file a lawsuit over the film.
