Suffice to say, Donald Trump isn’t the biggest fan of Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice.
Starring Sebastian Stan as the former president, The Apprentice is a drama set between the 1970s and 1980s that follows Trump’s rise as a real estate businessman in New York and his relationship with lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn (played by Succession‘s Jeremy Strong).
The film premiered at Cannes earlier this year, and currently holds a 79 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. While critic reviews have generally been mixed, the Trump campaign has been ardent on its distaste toward the film with spokesperson Steven Cheung threatening legal action back in May and deeming it ‘garbage’ and ‘pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.’
Although Trump was quiet on the film for sometime, the former president had some choice words to say about The Apprentice upon its release in theaters this week, writing on Truth Social: “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.’
Sebstian Stan stars as Donald Trump in The Apprentice. (Briarcliff Entertainment)
“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,” he continued.
Trump went on to slam the film’s depiction of his relationship with former wife, Ivana Trump (played by Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Maria Bakalova), writing: “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.
Jeremy Strong stars as Roy Cohn. (Briarcliff Entertainment)
“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. MAGA2024!,” Trump concluded.
The Apprentice‘s director, Ali Abbasi, previously addressed the controversy surrounding the film and the Trump campaign’s backlash in May, saying he didn’t think the film is one that Trump ‘would dislike.’
“I don’t necessarily think he would like it,” he added. “But I think he’d be surprised. So I’m happy to meet him, have a screening, and then we can discuss it afterwards.”
The Apprentice is out now in theaters.