Trump Campaign Threatens Lawsuit Over ‘The Apprentice’ Film

After the film The Apprentice debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, the Trump Campaign threatened to sue over the controversial depiction of the ex-president during his early days in real estate and his marriage to his first wife, Ivana.

Among scenes of Trump taking amphetamine pills and getting liposuction, Variety reported that the movie included a disturbing scene of the former president throwing Ivana to the floor and having nonconsensual sex with her. The outlet said a female attendee at the premiere referred to it as “rape,” while another agreed and said it was a disturbing sexual assault.

“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers. 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,” Trump campaign’s communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to Rolling Stone.

Cheung added, “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.”

In her 1990 sworn deposition during their divorce proceedings, Ivana described a similar assault that she claimed took place after Trump had a scalp-reduction operation by a plastic surgeon she recommended. She said Trump pushed her to the floor, pulled out chunks of her hair, and raped her. The accusations was revealed in Harry Hurt III’s 1993 book, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump.

Prior to the book publishing, Trump and his lawyers issued a statement from Ivana in which she walked back her claim and said she felt “violated” by the events, but that she didn’t mean that she’d been raped “in a literal or criminal sense.”

Earlier on Monday, Variety reported that Dan Snyder, Trump ally and former owner of the Washington Commanders, invested in The Apprentice and had been under the impression that the 45th president would be featured in a more flattering light. After viewing a cut of the film in February, Snyder reportedly was furious, and lawyers for production company, Kinematics, had to fend off a barrage of cease-and-desist letters.

“All creative and business decisions involving The Apprentice have always been and continue to be solely made by Kinematics,” said Kinematics president Emanuel Nuñez. “Mark and I run our company without the involvement of any other third parties.”