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Louise Thomas
Editor
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart has mocked Donald Trump after the Republican’s presidential campaign team called a new movie about him “election interference”.
Trump’s early days as a young real estate entrepreneur and his relationship with attorney Roy Cohn is the subject of The Apprentice, which sees Marvel actor Sebastian Stan play the controversial former president.
In May, the Trump campaign threatened to sue the filmmakers, calling the movie “pure fiction”.
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Trump campaign chief spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to Variety.
“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.”
The movie is now set to be released in cinemas on 11 October but Stewart believes that Trump should be happy about the film.
“That’s election interference?” laughed Stewart adding: “It’s not — maybe it’s election interference. But you gotta be a little bit flattered that you’re being played by Sebastian Stan.”
Riffing on the name of Stan’s Marvel character, Stewart continued: “Oh, Sebastian, if you are the Winter Soldier, why is it suddenly so warm in here?”
Stewart then joked: “I look like Sebastian Stan if you were to put his face through one of those filters on TikTok that show your appearance right before you die.”
The Apprentice premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in France in May.
The film reportedly received an eight-minute ovation.
Mr Abbasi, the director, told the audience that he hoped his film would be “relevant” to the times.
“There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism. There’s only the messy way. There’s only the banal way,” he said.
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“There’s only the way of dealing with this wave on its own terms, at its own level and it’s not going to be pretty, but I think the problem with the world is that the good people have been quiet for too long. So, I think it’s time to make movies relevant. It’s time to make movies political again.”
The biopic reportedly contains a number of unflattering scenes, including Trump using drugs and undergoing cosmetic operations.
More controversially, it shows Trump raping his first wife Ivana, who had accused him of sexually assaulting her in a 1989 divorce deposition. She later disavowed the age-old allegation in 2015.
