Politics

Why Trump’s furious condemnation of ‘The Apprentice’ film matters

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Why Trump’s furious condemnation of ‘The Apprentice’ film matters

It’s unlikely that Donald Trump has seen “The Apprentice,” a movie that chronicles his early rise, but he evidently doesn’t care for it. The Hill reported:

Former President Trump is slamming “The Apprentice,” calling the film about his early rise in New York “fake and classless.” “It’s a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country,” Trump wrote in an early morning Truth Social post on Monday.

The 150-word missivepublished shortly before 1 a.m. ET, covered some predictable ground, including the Republican expressing hope that the film will “bomb.”

But there was one sentence in the online piece that stood out for me: “So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want.”

It’s not surprising that Trump would whine incessantly about a movie he almost certainly hasn’t seen, but note the phrasing in his message: The GOP candidate lamented the fact that these filmmakers are “allowed” to say “whatever they want.”

It’s as if some people believe it’s a free country with a First Amendment. What nerve.

The line came almost seven years to the day after Trump declared during an Oval Office event that he considered it “disgusting” that the nation’s free press can “write whatever it wants.”

In recent days, of course, the former president hasn’t just lashed out at those responsible for “The Apprentice” movie. He also has launched a bizarre campaign against CBS and “60 Minutes,” accusing the outlet and the news program of a “scandal” that does not exist.

Trump has nevertheless repeatedly called for CBS to lose its broadcast license — an appeal that doesn’t actually make sense — a point he seemed especially excited about over the weekend. On Friday night, for example, the Republican said “60 Minutes” should be “taken off the air,” and a day later, he suggested during a Newsmax interview that the government should somehow pull CBS from the airwaves.

And did I mention that Trump said in reference to The New York Times: “Wait until you see what I’m going to do with them”? Because that happened last weektoo.

So let’s circle back to our earlier coverage and take stock. The Republican nominee for the nation’s highest office is threatening perceived foes with prison sentences endorsing a “strongman” leadership stylebragging about his support from dictatorsraising the prospect of a temporary American “dictatorship,” and talking about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions.

Trump is also arguing that his rivals shouldn’t be “allowed” to run against himtargeting immigrants with Hitler-style rhetoric while promising to create militarized mass deportations and detention campsspeaking with greater frequency about deporting people who entered the United States legallypromising pardons to politically aligned criminals raising the specter of military tribunals for his perceived domestic political foes, and talking about expanding the use of the U.S. military on American soil.

But specifically when it comes to the First Amendment, Trump recently insisted that those who criticize judges and Supreme Court justices that he likes “should be put in jail,” pushed for CBS to be pulled from the nation’s airwaves, made veiled threats against the nation’s largest newspaper, and asserted in writing that it’s awful to see filmmakers being “allowed” to say “whatever they want.”

It’s almost as if the former president were running on an authoritarian-style platform.

In early 2017, the then-president delivered a speech in which he boasted“I love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it better than me. Nobody.”

It was ridiculous at the time. It’s vastly worse now.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

13 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”