‘The Apprentice’ shows how Donald Trump transformed from man to monster: ‘You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win’

“It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump,” a New York Times editorial thundered last weekend, damning the former president as “morally unfit” to lead.
Even harder, perhaps, is imagining — or remembering — a time when Trump wasn’t Trump as the world now knows him: a self-serving egotist who lives in his own reality and denies any weakness or defeat.
Which makes “The Apprentice,” the eye-opening new movie by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abassi (“Holy Spider”) all the more of a must-see — especially as the Nov. 5 presidential election approaches, and with it the possible return of Trump to the White House. It shows how the man became the monster.
The fact-based drama, a Canadian co-production shot in Toronto, Hamilton and Uxbridge, looks at Trump in the 1970s and early ’80s. Dismissed then by New York power players as “Donald who?,” he was struggling to prove he was more than the naive middle son of New York real estate mogul Fred Trump Sr. (Martin Donovan).
The most remarkable thing about “The Apprentice,” even more than “Captain America” sidekick Sebastian Stan’s splendid portrayal of the title striver, is the sympathy the film arouses for Trump — but only briefly, until he becomes like the title hedonist in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” succumbing to moral and physical rot.
Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen supplies appropriately dark and claustrophobic images of New York in decline, as it was in the 1970s.
The year is 1973. Tired of being under the thumb of his dismissive and unloving father, and toiling as the harassed rent collector in the family’s Brooklyn apartment complex, a 27-year-old Donald J. Trump falls under the sway of ruthless New York lawyer Roy Cohn, played by “Succession” star Jeremy Strong.
Cohn, a sarcastic bully who has that fake orange suntan look that Trump will later become notorious for, apparently sees the young wannabe mogul as the son he never had.
Proud of his reputation as “Lucifer incarnate,” Cohn teaches the star-struck Trump his “attack, attack, attack!” philosophy of succeeding in business and life.
That’s the first of Cohn’s three main rules for winning. The other two are “admit nothing, deny everything” and “claim victory and never admit defeat,” slogans that sound awfully familiar because Trump clearly took them to heart.
Cohn is introduced to Trump as the lawyer “who got the Rosenbergs the chair,” a reference to the notorious 1953 spy trial and subsequent state execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. 
This is music to Trump’s ears, even more than the disco songs on the soundtrack. The U.S. Justice Department is accusing his family of racial discrimination against people of colour. Cohn spearheads the legal pushback and he and Trump become allies in what Strong, who also delivers a powerful performance, has described in interviews as “a love story.”
 
Their close relationship continued until Cohn’s death in 1986, a friendship that survived despite betrayals from Trump.
“The Apprentice” answers a lot of questions about how Trump became the showboating power seeker he’s known as today. He was the eager pupil of a man who believed, to quote yet another of Cohn’s sayings: “You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win.”
Actor Stan nails Trump’s clownish physicality: his verbal cadence and tics, his simian hand gestures and his rictus smirk, which seemed a lot less obvious in the ’70s and ’80s than they are now.
Abassi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman (TV’s “Alaska Daily”), seem at first impressed by Trump’s determination and they’re sympathetic toward him in the film’s first half. Mention is made of a New York Times profile that admiringly compares Trump’s tousled hair, which he’s constantly adjusting, to that of Robert Redford’s. (Late in the film Trump gets scalp-reduction surgery, and also liposuction, in a vain attempt to stave off aging.)
Trump has to put up with more than Cohn’s belittling comments about his clothing, his reluctance to drink and his awkward manner. He also gets a lot of verbal abuse from his father, who scorns his son’s dream to build luxury hotels and residences in downtown Manhattan, at a time when New York City is on the verge of bankruptcy. 
The human tendency is to feel for a guy like that, and to cheer him on as he meets and enthusiastically woos his future wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova of “Borat 2”). She’s a successful model who demands a $100,000 payment before she’ll marry a man she rightly suspects is an untrustworthy hound.
It doesn’t take long for Trump’s true colours to emerge as his Faustian deal with Cohn deepens. He begins referring to people as either “killers” or “losers” — guess how he sees himself — and he bullies New York civic leaders to cut him sweetheart tax deals to bankroll his building binge. 
As his confidence and swagger build, Trump’s remaining scruples vanish. He pulls away from Cohn, a closeted gay man who has contracted AIDS (although he denies it), which will ultimately kill him.
Trump also tires of Ivana, cruelly casting her aside after insulting her and brutally raping her, in the film’s most shocking scene.
How much “The Apprentice” is based on truth is hard to say; Ivana, who died in 2022, later recanted her rape accusation and the film opens with a disclaimer saying not everything that follows is 100 per cent verifiable.
Trump of course denies everything. He threatened legal action against the film, which had trouble finding distribution following its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
But none of it is hard to believe — especially a scene near the end where Trump takes credit for the three rules of success quoted above and which he attributes not to Cohn but rather to his own “natural ability.”