The Apprentice wasn’t kind to younger Donald Trump. Over the course of two full hours, director Ali Abbasi described the future President of the United States and human piece of shit as:
A jellyfish
A pussyhound
A racist
A rapist
A dunce
A beta
An asshole
An absentee parent
A peacock
A tool
An ingrate
A fraud
A crook
A shyster
An egotist
The kind of person who would sell out family for personal gain … because he did
And more. If this were your biopic, you wouldn’t want it to see the day of light, either.
Yet -and this has to be said, unfortunately- The Apprentice went easy on Donald Trump. The film assumed he once had a soul, that he once knew right-from-wrong. He chose “wrong,” of course, but he hesitated, as if he knew the difference and cared.
That isn’t the Donald Trump who became President. The film also ignored or downplayed his most salient characteristics, the ones we have seen on display every.single.day for the past nine (9) years: His pettiness, his vindictiveness, his authoritarianism, his narcissism, and the lies, lies, lies, lies, lies he tells day and night. No one is going to convince me he suddenly developed all that in late middle-age. This guy lies so often and cares so little about the damage his lies cause that it had to start from childhood. Not a single truthful person wakes up one morning and suddenly starts spouting a hundred lies a day. That’s insane.
If you ask me, this slam piece -like everything else in this world- held back a bit. He deserves far worse.
The time is Watergate and the scene is a restaurant where two men lock eyes from across the room. A love affair begins. Of course, the restaurant is exclusive and probably restricted and the two men are Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the most vile piece of shit in his day, and a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), who at the time could only dream of being the vile piece of shit he would become. Cohn immediately sees something in Trump, and after this lost little bundle of assholery follows Cohn into the men’s room, Cohn recognizes a level of sycophantic toadying that he will be able to abuse. Young Donald immediately becomes Cohn’s protégé.
Roy Cohn lived by three rules: 1) Attack, attack, attack. 2) Admit nothing, deny everything. 3) Never concede defeat. You might recognize these rules. Our country sure did. They guided every day of the Trump presidency and beyond. In retrospect, it occurs to me how useless these rules are to anybody who doesn’t wield an ungodly amount of power. For average people, these rules are almost guaranteed to result in poverty, misery, and loneliness.
The first big lesson I learned as a young adult was that if you put in the effort, you can win almost any battle you put your mind to. It’s an important lesson; it teaches self-reliance and comprehension; there’s agency baked in. The next lesson I learned was: While the first lesson is true, there are some battles you don’t actually want to win. There are pyrrhic victories everywhere. This an also an important lesson as it recognizes long-term goals are more important than short-term ones. The third lesson, however, was the most important: There are battles you can’t win. Period.
The biggest problem with Cohn and Trump is neither recognized the third lesson. And it’s evident in who they are deep down. Young Donald pleads with Cohn to get a landlord-tenant discrimination suit erased. Cohn recognizes Trump’s case (made on behalf of his asshole father) is a dud, but manages to win it with incriminating photos. Who needs the law when you play dirty?
The film delves into Trump’s tutelage at the feet on Cohn and also his ham-fisted attempts to corral his first wife, Ivana – who he cheats on, rapes, and abandons in due time- I was kinda hoping their meetcute would include the phrase, “One day I’m gonna bury you on a golf course.” Alas, no luck.
I’m not sure there are words for watching Trump slowly and almost unintentionally turn from Cohn’s project to Dr. Cohn’s monster, but lemme see if I can try: You know how the Central Siberian Yupik people have 40 terms for snow? Well, imagine a culture in which people threw up every day. They wake up with a hurl, they dry heave through breakfast, they lose their lunch, they upchuck at dinner; they gag at the slightest impulse. Now, how many terms for “regurgitate” 
do you think this culture has? I would say watching Donald Trump in action would inspire this particular culture to develop a new term for regurgitate. Thank God it was Sebastian Stan and not the real Trump.
The biggest problem with The Apprentice is that it describes nothing other than the life of Donald Trump, the playboy years. And, truth be told, those years were not terribly exciting to anybody other than Donald Trump. To put it another way. If Donald Trump doesn’t ascend to the presidency, this film is worthless. We would ask why it’s even being made. For me, it was hard to escape that feeling. I mean, sure, I like a good Trump exposé as much as the next guy, probably even more. But the film is as vacuous as Trump’s morality. Because until Donald Trump is truly held accountable, this film represents yet another tired example of shouting into the wind.
Now, that all said, the film got a stellar performance out of Jeremy Strong. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got an Oscar nod for this portrayal. While Sebastian Stan didn’t exactly remind me of the world’s biggest scourge, he seemed up to the task of making us loathe the man. And if that were enough for me, I’d love this film. As is, however, I do not.
There was a force pure evil, Roy Cohn
Who made Donald Trump his biz clone
We know DJT
And we’re not shocked to see
That douchebag went from novice to “disown”
Rated R, 122 Minutes
Director: Ali Abbasi
Writer: Gabriel Sherman
Genre: Tell us something we don’t know
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Have you ever wanted to hate Trump so much you investigated where it started?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Donald Trump
