cover of episode ‘The Apprentice’: Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Pursuit of Power

‘The Apprentice’: Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Pursuit of Power

2024/10/16
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The film 'The Apprentice' explores how Roy Cohn, a ruthless attorney, mentored Donald Trump, teaching him tactics to manipulate the media and bend the truth.
  • Roy Cohn was infamous for investigating suspected communists and securing the conviction of the Rosenbergs.
  • Cohn taught Trump strategies like attacking relentlessly, admitting nothing, and never admitting defeat.
  • Trump's rise in New York real estate was aided by powerful figures like Rupert Murdoch and George Steinbrenner.

Shownotes Transcript

The new film “The Apprentice),” takes us back to New York in the 1970s, to when Donald Trump was just starting to make a name for himself, and to his introduction to Roy Cohn, the ruthless attorney and political fixer. The fictionalized depiction of real events, shows how Cohn molded Trump into his protégé, imparting his political lessons on how to wield political power, manipulate the media, and bend the truth. The film was directed by Ali Abbasi and written and executive produced by Gabriel Sherman, with notable actors such as Jeremy Strong playing Roy Cohn, Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, and Maria Bakalova as Trump’s first wife, Ivana.

 The team faced a complicated path to bringing “The Apprentice” to theater screens – struggling with procuring financing, searching for a distributor in the United States, and also facing legal threats from the Trump team – but it finally opened in theaters in the United States on October 11th. 

On Monday, Trump wrote) on Truth Social about the film: “It’s a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country…”

Host Brooke Gladstone sat down with screenwriter and executive producer of the film, Gabriel Sherman), on Friday, October 11th.

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