Trump’s team calls biopic The Apprentice dumpster fire and Elon Musk offers to host presidential debate
Hello and welcome back. It’s time for another edition of our weekly recaps for the upcoming 2024 US presidential election. This, my dear friends, is where we delve into all of the latest developments shaping the most powerful country in the world’s political landscape.
Today, we’re going to be delving into the mounting criticism—and potential legal action—surrounding the new Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice, considering how on earth Nazi rhetoric has made it onto the campaign trail (again), and learning more about Elon Musk’s offer to host the most recent highly-anticipated upcoming presidential debate.
Trump campaign threatens to sue filmmakers of ‘The Apprentice’
On 20 May 2024, The Apprentice, a tale of the former president’s life as a businessman in the 70s and 80s, premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. The movie is set during the early years of Trump’s career as a real estate mogul and explores his relationship with Roy Cohn, a New York City prosecutor, who gives him a taste of deception, power, and reckless male hedonism that eventually ends up moulding Trump into a self-centred and delusion narcissist. You know, the man we’re all very familiar with today.
The Sebastian Stan-led film currently holds a 69 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating generally favourable reviews.
Cate Blanchett led the eight-minute #Cannes2024 standing ovation for ‘The Apprentice,’ hugging Sebastian Stan and congratulating director Ali Abbasi. pic.twitter.com/3ntckc2uGA
— Ramin Setoodeh (@RaminSetoodeh) May 20, 2024
That being said, Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any kind words left for the movie based on his life. In fact, Steven Cheung, the communications director for the former president’s campaign, threatened legal action against the film due to its depiction of one gruesome and graphic rape scene involving the Republican frontrunner and his ex-wife Ivana Trump.
In case you didn’t know, author Harry Hurt III wrote a book about Trump’s life in 1993 titled The Lost Tycoon. For the book, the writer acquired Ivana’s divorce deposition, in which she stated that Trump raped her. According to the book, Ivana later confided in her friends about the violent attack, giving rise to widespread rumours around sexual violence in Trump’s first marriage.
In a statement to Variety, Cheung said: “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”
“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalises 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,” the statement continued.
Biden hits back at Trump for using Nazi phrase
In another classic quintessential Trump moment, the Republican candidate uploaded a controversial video to his social media network Truth Social on Monday 20 May 2024, in which he made some controversial references to World War I and II.
Among them, was the mention of a “unified Reich,” which alludes to the Nazi regime, further heightening already existing rumours that Trump is an admirer of Adolph Hitler.
The video consisted of headlines on fabricated newspapers that read messages such as “Trump wins!,” “What’s next for America?” and “Economy booms!”
Then we move on to: “Industrial strength significantly increased driven by the creation of a unified Reich.”
The word “Reich” refers to the Germanic world “realm,” meaning empire. It also carries the connotation of Germany’s former dictator Hitler’s Third Reich, another name for his Nazi regime.
In Trump’s new video, it ends with the line:
— JON DEE (JonDee.com) (@JonDeeOz) May 21, 2024
“Strength significantly increased by the creation of a unified Reich.”
Yep. He’s gone there.pic.twitter.com/yPkftKWBSA pic.twitter.com/PhglGdDfGd
Ivana Trump famously alleged that Trump kept a copy of Hitler’s famous manifesto Mein Kampf on his nightstand.
The Trump campaign removed the video due to the controversy it renegrated. Nevertheless, Joe Biden still decided to hit back on his opponent.
“Yesterday, his campaign posted online about if he wins it’ll be a unified reich—like the Third Reich,” the incumbent president said during a Tuesday campaign event in Boston. “This is the same guy that uses Hitler’s language, not America’s.”
Elon Musk agrees to host presidential debate on X
On 27 June 2024, Biden and Trump will finally battle it out on live TV in a highly-anticipated debate on CNN. It marks the earliest-ever general election debate in a presidential race. So, just in case you weren’t yet aware, this is going to be lowkey historic.
However, one voice will be absent. The current independent candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jr, aka the guy whose brain was eaten by a worm. To be honest, the whole worm thing might be why he insists on pushing so much anti-vaccine propaganda.
Anyways, it had looked as though Kennedy Jr might have had to be resigned to screaming, shouting and pouting about it till June. But then, Elon Musk came to the candidate’s rescue and offered to hold a presidential debate involving Kennedy on X, formerly Twitter.
That being said, in a memo earlier this month, Biden’s campaign stipulated that the debates should be limited to just the president and the presumptive Republican nominee, meaning that it’s unlikely anyone will take Musk and Kennedy up on their offer of adding an extra-special guest to the social media debate. But, I suppose it’s never a bad idea to try?
