Ali Abbasi responds to Trump legal threats

Director of “The Apprentice” talks about legal threats posed to him by Trump’s legal team.

By Olivia Peters

Ali Abbasi shares his thoughts on the legal threats he received from Donald Trump’s legal team
following the premiere of his film about Trump’s life, “The Apprentice”.

Ali Abbasi has spoken about receiving legal threats from former President Donald Trump’s legal team after his film “The Apprentice” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

“The Apprentice” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and began its theatrical release yesterday, October 11. The film portrays Donald Trump’s relationship with lawyer Roy Cohn, which started in the early 70s.

Abbasi describes his film as “fact-based and fact-checked”. The film includes a disclaimer stating that some of the events depicted have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Abbasi maintains that the film is as true to its source material as possible and describes the movie as “not a Trump movie”.

He discusses the film saying, “It’s a story of how young Donald Trump was formed with the help of his mentor, Roy Cohn, and how he sort of started to become the person we now know.” Abbasi continues, “But it’s also a story of a system, the depiction of the American system, the legal system, the inherent corruption in a system that allowed people like Roy Cohn to navigate freely and sort of pull the levers of power as they see fit.”

After the initial premiere of “The Apprentice”, Donald Trump’s attornies delivered a cease-and-desist letter to Abbasi. Steven Cheung, Trump’s chief spokesperson, shared the following statement with Variety, “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers… This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalized lies that have been long debunked… this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice.”

In response, Abbasi described the reception of the film from both liberals and conservatives stating that he has received criticism from liberals that the film is “not critical enough” of Donald Trump, while also receiving backlash from conservatives who feel the film is “too critical.” Abbasi has taken these critics in stride saying, “I think if we succeed in pissing off both sides we’re doing something right.”