Trump campaign slams Cannes film 'The Apprentice,' labels it 'pure fiction'

The Trump campaign has come out strongly against The Apprentice, a film that shocked audiences at Cannes with its portrayal of former US president Donald Trump raping his first wife, Ivana Trump, among other things.

A spokesperson of the campaign confirmed that the Republican plans to sue "to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers."

'Pure fiction'

In a conversation with Variety following the film's premiere, Trump's chief spokesperson Steven Cheung on Monday (May 20) slammed the movie, directed by Ali Abbasi and starring Sebastian Stan as Trump.

Cheung called it "garbage" and "pure fiction," saying it sensationalises "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," said Cheung.

Labelling the film "pure malicious defamation," he said it "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 Apprentice received an eight-minute standing ovation at Cannes on Monday, reports The Guardian.

It includes scenes of Trump undergoing liposuction and scalp-reduction surgery.

However, the most controversial scene is where he rapes Ivana Trump.

Even though it opens with a disclaimer stating that the events are fictionalised, the movie has sparked intense reactions.

The alleged rape

The rape scene is a dramatised version of an incident disclosed in the couple's 1990 divorce proceedings.

Ivana Trump initially described the 1989 incident as a rape but later retracted, stating that while she felt violated, she didn't mean it in a criminal sense.

"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," she said in a 1993 statement.

(With inputs from agencies)