This biopic of Donald Trump scares movie distributors and the portrayal of events which happened long before its subject became President of the United States makes clear why. In his first campaign for president he said he knew how to get politicians to do things which became a selling point even though it strongly suggested payments and other nefarious actions. The first nefarious thing he did involved this old story that old time New Yorkers know better than me Trump sells Hyatt to Pritzkers
You can find the son of this Pritzker on line comfortably bashing Donald Trump. The son is now the Governor of Illinois and he is every bit the billionaire that Trump is. He’s even talking about running for President. So, of course, is Trump but before the Republican was leveraged into a state of zombiehood by his Maga take over his party made a Trump third term impossible without amending the Constitution. They considered the liberal Franklin Roosevelt a socialist despite his millionaire status and when he was dead and gone and the post war period began they got the Consitution amended making sure no president ever again would get a third full, let alone fourth full term of office. I predict that Trump won’t be much more on top of his game in four years than Joe Biden was before he was edged to the side.
For me who grew up with Trump only five years behind the budding entrepreneur I cought lots of things in the movie like modernist painter Andy Warhold at a Roy Cohn saturnalia. The movie pretty much begins and ends with Cohn. Detested by New York’s attorneys after his work for Senator Joe McCarthy during the Army witch hunt and because it was generally known he was a queer…..before the term “gay” emerged to soften the scorn of that coarse imprecation.
I was surprised at a rather sympathetic treatment of they young Trump and his early softness made me question if it could have been so. His Dad Fred was disappointed with his older brother for not wanting to get involved with his business of real estate. The father’s disappointment leads Fred Jr. down the path of alcoholism and an early death. Despite Trump’s self mythologizing in his early bios about punching second grade teachers in the face in this drama his first appearances is as a rent collector. Knocking on doors of people short of cash like a paperboy from my era collecting for paper deliveries he endures considerable harassment and even a pay of boiling water. Its hard to imagine that this could have been true but I suspect the film maker knew what he was about. Public figures like Trump can be subject to such portrayals unflattering or otherwise but Trump has resources to frighted film distributors and he has sued people for defaming him before. He lost such a suit when he sued the New York Times for writing he wasn’t a billionaire.
Then Trump has to help his father fight an impossible to win war with the Federal government because the Trumps don’t let African Americans into their best apartments in defiance of the fair housing laws. The infamous Cohn catches sight of Trump at a fancy restaurant and Trump aware of his ferocious reputation joins him with some of the attorney’s mafia clients who josh with the clueless kid. Cohn gets the water drinking Trump to choke down a lot of booze which Trump does because he wants Cohn to represent him as he fights off the Feds. The actor playing Cohn isn’t as ugly as the broken nosed Cohn but he intimidates and thrills Trump by threatening to expose the homosexuality of a man central to the Fed’s decision.
I can only assume that these story tellers have the goods on this episode perhaps from some other book because if it was not true I think Trump would have grounds for defamation. And Trump’s next big achievement is managed again by Cohn who has sect tape recording of all manner of people who can be blackmailed…..obviously his early work exposing communists has given him access to killer tech. Trump is shown in both cases as knowing full well these are illegal actions but Cohn has little trouble getting Trump to go along with lessons that result in his career as an artist of deals…..corrupt but profitable.
It is with the Hyatt that Trump has his first encounter with the Pritzkers who hold financial power over him despite their skepticism as well as his Father’s that he can pull off these miracles. Like Americans generally they didn’t know about the blackmail. By now Cohn has given Trump his three rules. Attack, Attack, Attack, deny everything and always claim victory. This has made me question my sense that Trump was a born sociopath. Perhaps sociopathy can be learned and branded onto your chest.
Trump begins to leap frog Cohn who once enjoyed making Donald squirm. Soon Don faces people like New York’s mayor at the time with a dismissive disdain that even Cohn finds extreme. By now the student has eclipsed the master although the master will miss him. As President he has been overheard to say “Where is my Roy Cohn?” He’s finding more and more of them and even given one of them a presidential pardon.
Trump’s pursuit of a disinterested beauty, Ivana, gives the movie some moments of charm. But he is shown telling her that he no longer finds her attractive and even complains about her breast implants which she indignantly tells him he forced her to get. Add in his raping her later on and there is little charm left.
I can only presume that there is enough evidence of these actions to protect the movie’s makers from defamation suits. I heard that Ivana herself claimed in a suit against her husband that he had raped her but that she later denied it. She was not the first Slav to give Trump what he wanted to stay on his better side. If I was a lawyer interviewing Ivana, which she can no longer do because she’s interred on a Trump golf course for a taxbreak I would ask her in court which time she was lying. with the initial claim or its retraction.
I presume the movie makers went to some of the best sources of info on Trump. The infamously germophobic Trump is shown washing his hands and steaming the place setting where Cohn say at the birthday party he threw for the AIDs sick Cohn after inviting Roy to his new acquisition Mar-a-Lago. It is Ivana who breaks the news to the dying attorney that the gold cufflinks given him by Trump with his name engraved in them are only cheap pewter.
Cohn died knowing Trump had abandoned him. Let’s hope the next group of people Trump disappoints will have ways of letting him know how much he has let them down.