Gabriel Sherman, a journalist who has contributed to Vanity Fair and New York Magazine, wrote the screenplay for the new film The Apprentice and spoke about the movie during an interview with Breitbart News Saturday.
Sherman said the movie shows the “relentlessness” of former President Donald Trump and how he did not “stop until” he got what he was trying to accomplish.
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The controversial biopic of Trump’s life, which was released in cinemas on October 11, “follows Trump during his rise to power” in the 70s and 80s, and shows his relationship with his mentor, Roy Cohn.
“I covered Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for New York magazine where I was working at the time. And I was struck by things that people working for Trump – who had known him since the 80s — told me: that he was doing so well on the campaign trail because he was using a lot of the lessons that his mentor Roy Cohn taught him,” Sherman explained.
Sherman added that Cohn “had three rules” that Trump used in politics.
“The three rules are number one, attack, attack, attack; number two, deny everything, never admit and back down; and number three, claim victory. And these three lessons are part of what makes Donald Trump so powerful as a candidate,” Sherman added.
“I thought to myself, you know what? There’s probably an amazing movie in there in how Donald Trump, who came from the outer boroughs of New York — came from money, but not a lot of status – learned these lessons and was in a position to become president,” Sherman added.
Sherman added that while he was doing research, he had been “struck by” the idea Trump held in “his early days” that the United States “was being ripped off” and that “America wasn’t getting respect.”
“I was struck by — when I did the research and going back to his early days — this idea that America was being ripped off, that America wasn’t getting respect. He had views all the way back to the 1970s, and I was just so surprised at kind of how consistent he has been on that,” Sherman said.
“He was trying to build luxury buildings in Manhattan at a time when the city was going down the tubes and everyone thought he was crazy. That’s why I think it’s such an interesting story, because we see a side of Trump where the world is not taking him seriously because he was in his 20s. I think that’s the other thing that really struck me. When he built his first development, the Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan, he was 27 years old, and he had never built a building in Manhattan. His dad had built middle-class apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens, so Donald Trump had to convince people to take him seriously.”
Sherman added that while he had been writing, the “character of a young Trump,” was his “relentlessness,” and how he “doesn’t stop.”
“I think the other thing that struck me when I was writing this character of a young Trump was the relentlessness. He just doesn’t stop until he gets what he’s trying to do. I think, no matter what your politics are, that’s a really interesting character,” Sherman added.