- The controversial biopic shocked Cannes at its premiere on Monday night
- Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said it would be suing its makers
- He said The Apprentice ‘sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked’
The Trump campaign announced it will sue the ‘pretend filmmakers’ behind a controversial new movie that shows the presidential candidate raping his wife Ivana.
It said it was riddled with long debunked lies and belonged in a ‘dumpster fire.’
Sebastian Stan plays Trump in ‘The Apprentice’ as a younger man and ‘Succession’ star Jeremy Strong portrays his fixer Roy Cohn. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday night.
The movie tells the story of the end of his marriage to Ivana, and at one point it depicts Trump raping his wife and asking: ‘Did I find your g spot?’
In a divorce deposition in 1989 Ivana made an accusation of rape but rescinded this in 2015. She has since died.
‘We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,’ said Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director.
‘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.
‘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.’
The makers of the film are also reported to be in dispute with one of its financial backers, billionaire Dan Snyder, who is a Trump supporter and former donor to his campaign.
The Apprentice sees Sebastian Stan play Trump during the flourishing early years of his business career, notably his working relationship with controversial lawyer Roy Cohn, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986.
Production on The Apprentice began in late November. The film follows Trump in the ’70s and ’80s as he attempts to establish his real estate empire on the back of his father Fred Trump’s properties.
The Apprentice is directed by the Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi, who shot the critically acclaimed Persian-language crime thriller Holy Spider, released in 2022.
In Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, she stated that Mr Trump raped her. She claimed that Trump pushed her to the floor and pulled out several handfuls of her hair.
Mr Trump denied the allegation and Ivana Trump later said she did not mean it literally, but rather that she had felt violated.
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.’
