Young Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Dark Arts of Power

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gabriel Sherman on “The Apprentice,” his coming-of-age film about Trump. There are “parts of the film that I could imagine Donald Trump liking,” Sherman says.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listen to Support it, WNYC Studios. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Acters have been
0:20.4	impersonating Donald Trump since long before he went into politics.
0:25.0	Going back to the 80s on Saturday Night Live, Phil Hartman donned a wig and did Trump.
0:30.6	And then came Darryl Hammond, Jason Soudakus, Alec Baldwin, and now James Austin Johnson.
0:37.0	In the reality show The Apprentice, Trump played himself as a kind of boardroom cartoon and he made a fortune.
0:47.2	A new film, also called The Apprentice, goes in the opposite direction.
0:51.9	The actor Sebastian Stan doesn't play Trump for comedy.
0:55.3	This is a serious coming of age film in which the young Trump falls under the sway of Roy
1:01.1	Cohn, an amoral fixer who made his bones as an aid to the red-bating
1:05.0	senator Joe McCarthy, and now instructs his young charge in the ruthless pursuit of power.
1:11.6	Well, in life there are two types of people.
1:17.0	There are killers and there are losers.
1:20.0	But it's good not to be a killer, no?
1:25.0	Killer means winner.
1:27.0	Oh.
1:30.0	So, are you a killer, Donald?
1:37.2	After a very complicated path to completion,
1:39.8	and we'll get to that,
1:41.1	the apprentice will be released in October. It was written and produced
1:44.8	by the journalist Gabriel Sherman. Sherman was the author of the loudest voice in the
1:49.2	room about Roger Ailes, Fox News, and sexual harassment.
1:56.8	Gabe, just when we thought we knew everything about Donald Trump,
	...

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