Donald Trump Movie The Apprentice to Premiere at Cannes: First Look and What We Know Hollywood Reporter
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Donald Trump Movie The Apprentice to Premiere at Cannes: First Look and What We Know - Hollywood Reporter
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When President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor in 1974, averting a potential trial for Richard M. Nixon, he cited a desire to keep the country calm. Prosecuting Nixon, Ford said in a public address, would inevitably plunge the nation into a bitter, polarized divide.
My concern is the immediate future of this great country, Ford declared.
In the half-century since Ford announced that pardon, other nations have charted a different path, prosecuting former presidents or prime minsters in France, Brazil, South Korea, Israel and elsewhere for numerous alleged crimes, among them embezzlement, corruption, election interference and bribery.
Some cases have illustrated the virtues of trying to hold the most powerful political officials accountable under the rule of law as well as the formidable challenges that arise when prosecuting such figures. These former leaders can rely on ample bully pulpits to assail the process, maintain influence, shore up support and, in some cases, reclaim power.
The United States appears set to breach the line Ford dared not cross, with Donald Trump expected this month to become the countrys first ex-president to stand trial.
Trumps trial in New York, scheduled to begin April 15, comes in one of four cases where he faces criminal charges. The cases raise broader questions about the durability of the American justice system and the publics faith in democracy, particularly with Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, barreling toward a November rematch with President Biden.
The notion that not just charges would be brought, but that a former president and possibly future president might be convicted and sent to jail is truly extraordinary, said William Howell, an American politics professor at the University of Chicago. How the system and how the American public will respond is going to be really revealing about the nature of our democratic commitments.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in each of his criminal cases. The presidential election remains months away, but polling has shown that rather than harming him politically, Trumps indictments were accompanied by a surge in GOP support.
Perhaps the most difficult challenge of prosecuting ex-leaders anywhere in the world, legal analysts said, is that doing so can risk appearing overtly political and contribute to large numbers of citizens losing faith in the impartiality and fairness of the legal system.
Rulers in authoritarian nations routinely jail opponents on false or questionable charges, and who gets targeted for prosecution can depend on who is in power. In Russia, for example, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putins fiercest domestic critics, was sentenced to a cumulative three decades in prison, and he died in February in a remote penal colony. And in China, President Xi Jinpings chief political rival, Sun Zhengcai, was sentenced to life in prison on corruption charges in 2018.
In liberal democracies, too, ex-leaders facing investigations and criminal charges have sought to depict these cases as weaponized, political law enforcement similar to rhetoric from Trump and his allies, who routinely invoke such arguments to denounce the investigators and prosecutors scrutinizing him.
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who led the country from 2007 to 2012, has vigorously maintained his innocence in cases involving corruption and illegal campaign funding, railing against prosecutors and judges.
Sarkozy has been convicted in two cases so far; he was sentenced to six months in prison and remains free on appeal. He also still faces a third case, which could go to trial next year. The case involves allegations that Sarkozy accepted illegal campaign funding from Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi during his 2007 presidential run. Gaddafi was killed in 2011.
Sarkozys claim that this is political is more or less gospel with the French right, said Robert Zaretsky, a historian and author at the University of Houston.
Zaretsky emphasized that Sarkozy has not gone as far as Trump in attacking a broader deep state plot against him by the French government. And while Sarkozy maintains influence on French conservatives, he said, Trump leads a more extreme right-wing movement in the United States.
In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro modeled his political rise on Trumps nationalist insurgency and took office in 2019. Now, he has been charged by Brazilian authorities with forging a coronavirus vaccine card before entering the United States in late 2022, after he lost reelection.
Bolsonaro is also facing an investigation into accusations that he sought to co-opt Brazilian police to block his successor, President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, from taking office. Mobs of Bolsonaros supporters stormed federal government buildings during Lulas inauguration on Jan. 8, 2023, in a scene that echoed Trump supporters Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Unlike Trump, Bolsonaro has been banned from public office until 2030 under a ruling from the Superior Electoral Court over false statements he made about the 2022 election.
The fact that [the electoral court] took that first step is a really big deal. Its happened and its gone by, said Rachel Bill Chavez, president and chief executive of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank focused on the Western Hemisphere.
In some countries, a former leader facing a trial has become a familiar sight, rather than a novelty.
South Korea has seen four ex-presidents jailed for corruption since the 1980s. Another ex-president died by suicide in 2009 while under investigation. Most recently, former president Park Geun-hye was impeached in 2017 and, the following year, sentenced to 24 years in prison for bribery and abuse of power.
Though the prosecutions have contributed to political partisanship, analysts said, South Koreas judicial system has endured, and in some ways emerged stronger.
In late 2021, President Moon Jae-in pardoned Park, and she has retreated to a life outside the political spotlight. Moon was succeeded in 2022 by South Koreas prosecutor general Yoon Suk Yeol, who oversaw the criminal convictions of Park and another former president, Lee Myung-bak, on abuse of power charges.
When Park was impeached, they had an out-of-cycle presidential election. They did everything according to the rules. There wasnt anybody who questioned it, said Victor Cha, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And then, in the last election, the margin of victory was thinner than in the United States and the losing candidate conceded and accepted the results.
Cha noted that South Korean presidents are limited to a single five-year term, which helps insulate the country against ex-leaders who might seek to regain power as a way to ward off legal investigations.
One of Americas closest allies recently saw an indicted leader return to office, with controversial results.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was charged in 2019 with fraud, breach of trust and bribery, while still in office. His trial was marked by delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Netanyahu left office in 2021, and he railed against a prosecutorial witch hunt. By the following year, he had returned to power.
Netanyahu and his conservative allies then set about trying to overhaul the countrys judiciary, even as the prime ministers criminal prosecutions were ongoing, a plan that fueled intense unrest in Israel.
It got to the point where he was trying to rig the judicial system by using the argument that there is a conspiracy theory against him, said Victor Menaldo, a political science professor at the University of Washington.
In Fords telling five decades ago, concerns about the United States stability were paramount when he pardoned Nixon. Ford said the act was necessary to avoid ugly passions among the electorate and quash public doubts about the credibility of our free institutions of government.
Fords pardon set in the publics mind the idea that prosecuting a former president was beyond the pale, said Howell, the University of Chicago professor. By the same token, Howell said, what happens in Trumps criminal cases could set a new precedent for how future presidents conduct themselves for better or worse.
Trump already has vowed political and judicial payback against his rivals if he wins another term.
Trump has said [to his followers]: I am your retribution, said Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law professor. And one of the ways of understanding that is: Im going to prosecute all of the people who prosecuted me.
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Trump is first ex-U.S. president on trial, but other nations have done it - The Washington Post
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Sebastian Stan is continuing to be a master of disguise.
After portraying Tommy Lee in Hulu series Pam and Tommy and transforming via prosthetics for A Different Man, Stan is now taking on the role of a lifetime: Donald Trump. Stan leads The Apprentice, directed by Border and Holy Spider filmmaker Ali Abbasi from a script by Gabe Sherman.
The Apprentice is debuting at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in competition alongside buzzy features like Paul Schraders Oh, Canada, Francis Ford Coppolas Megalopolis, Yorgos Lanthimos Kinds of Kindness, Paolo Sorrentinos Parthenope, andDavid Cronenbergs The Shrouds.
The Apprentice centers on Trumps (Stan) rise to fame following what the official description calls a Faustian deal with right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Trumps marriage to Ivana Trump (Maria Bakalova) and relationship with his family including Fred Trump Sr. (Martin Donovan) are also interrogated onscreen. The film is written by first-time feature screenwriter Gabriel Sherman.
The feature is produced by Daniel Bekerman for Scythia Films (Canada), Jacob Jarek for Profile Pictures (Denmark), Ruth Treacy and Julianne Forde for Tailored Films (Ireland), and director Abbasi and Louis Tisne for Film Institute (Denmark). Executive producers are Amy Baer, Mark H. Rapaport, Emanuel Nunez, Josh Marks, Grant S. Johnson, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Thorsten Schumacher, Niamh Fagan, Gabe Sherman, Lee Broda, and James Shani.
Actor Stan previously told IndieWire that he selects roles that scare him, especially post-MCU reign. Hes starred in Marvel projects as Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier. A Different Man won Stan the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the 2024 Berlinale.
More and more as Ive gotten older, when I read something that really kind of freaks me out a little bit and I get the voice thats like, Dont ever go near this, then Im more drawn to it as a result, Stan said in 2022. I find usually that fear is a good indicator of something that I have to sort of step into perhaps to understand better. I hate comfort. I dont like to feel comfortable, work-wise. I feel its easy to get comfortable. I think its easy to get sort of trapped as an actor and to just do things.
The Apprentice premieres in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Abbasis Border won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2018, while Holy Spider competed for the Palme dOr in 2022. See the full 2024 lineup here.
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'The Apprentice' First Look: Sebastian Stan Is a Young Donald Trump Building His Empire - IndieWire
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Speaker Mike Johnson plans on Friday to join former President Donald J. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to make what he called a major announcement on election integrity.
It was not immediately clear what the pair were planning to discuss at their joint appearance, though Mr. Trump has continued to insist falsely that he was the true winner of the 2020 election and groundlessly accuse Democrats of attempting to interfere in the 2024 contest.
Their first public event together since Mr. Johnson was elected to the top job in the House last fall comes at an awkward moment in their relationship.
The embattled speaker is facing a threat for his ouster from one of Mr. Trumps top loyalists in Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Georgia Republican. And even as Mr. Johnson has worked to show enthusiastic support for Mr. Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee is stoking G.O.P. divisions and undermining the speakers legislative agenda in Congress.
The joint billing will come two days after Mr. Trump weighed in against legislation Mr. Johnson put forward to extend an expiring warrantless surveillance law that national security officials say is crucial to fighting terrorism and gathering intelligence. Mr. Trump urged lawmakers to kill the law undergirding the program, and ultraconservatives in the House banded together to block it from coming to the House floor in an embarrassing defeat for Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson also is agonizing over how and when to bring to the floor a bill to send a fresh infusion of American military assistance to Ukraine a move Mr. Trump has long opposed. (Mr. Trump has said it is stupid for the United States to offer foreign aid to countries instead of loans.)
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Johnson to Join Trump at Mar-a-Lago for 'Election Integrity' Announcement - The New York Times
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On Monday, in a courtroom in New York, Donald Trump will become the first ever sitting or former US president to face a criminal trial.
As Hugo Lowell explains to Hannah Moore, it is a case that revolves around alleged payments made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and, as New York prosecutors argue, the attempts by Trump and his campaign team to then cover them up.
But after so many years of scandal, will this trial or the other three Trump is due to face have any impact on his chances at regaining the presidency in elections this November?
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Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump, and the start of the hush money trial podcast - The Guardian
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