How Roy Cohn created Donald Trump

LE MONDE’S OPINION – A MUST SEE

Created in 2004 on the American network NBC, the reality show The Apprenticeproduced and hosted by Donald Trump, saw a group of candidates eager to join the company’s executive ranks duke it out while residing for a week in Trump Tower. There, the big boss was tasked with eliminating the candidates one by one, until the last remaining applicant was bestowed the Holy Grail. Made famous, not so much for its celebration of the winners as for its humiliation of the losers, his expression “you’re fired” became notorious, while the show revealed its true purpose: pure product placement for the guest entrepreneur.

Since this philosophy is not just about business but life itself, and hence about life as business, it made sense to give the same name to a film that purports to shed some light on Trump’s formative years and his decisive 1980s relationship with the corrupt, ultraconservative lawyer Roy Cohn (1927-1986). Directed by Iranian-born Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi from a screenplay by American political scientist Gabriel Sherman, The Apprentice is not a traditional biopic relying on exhaustive mimicry. Instead, it’s what might be called a conceptual biopic, built around a key concept and a slice of life that captures the essence of a celebrity and his destiny.

The film begins in the 1970s. Trump (Sebastian Stan) is a discreet, almost dull young man who still goes around door-to-door to collect rent from the grim tenements owned by his father, who made his fortune in real estate. Donald, convinced that the decay New York suffered from at the time should be exploited to lay the foundations for a completely gentrified city, dreams of moving up a gear. His chance encounter with Cohn (Jeremy Strong) will help him do just that. This man of ill repute – legal adviser to Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) in the 1950s, devoted servant of neoconservative figures, close to the Mafia, a shame-filled Jew and homosexual, shady lawyer, terror of the bar association, known for his shameless methods – takes a liking to Donald. He becomes the family group’s lawyer, using his influential network of contacts to save them from an embarrassing case of racial discrimination.

The film then turns into a story of apprenticeship, tragedy and morality. Cohn acts as a substitute father for young Donald, taking the place of Fred Trump (1905-1999), disqualified from this role because of his distrust of his son and his old-fashioned methods. However, this second father is a perverted role model, teaching him contempt for the law, unscrupulousness, greed and the religion of force and victory. His pupil does such a good job assimilating these lessons that they end up being turned against the one who taught them. A classic arc. The entire second half of the film, during which we see Trump consolidate his fortune in the 1980s, is about the abandonment and symbolic killing of his mentor, who was secretly dying of AIDS.

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