President Trump has cited his seven-second cameo in Home Alone 2 and at Wrestlemania V as evidence of his “mega-celebrity,” in a legal case against The New York Times.
The bizarre lawsuit focuses on a book and three articles that were published in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, but it is the pettiness of its wording that most grabs attention.
Trump, 79, is suing the paper, four of its reporters, and book publisher Penguin Random House for $15 billion for what he has declared on Truth Social has been a “decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole.”
The reporters, Peter Baker, Michael Schmidt, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner, have written a cache of articles that Trump and his legal team call “defamatory” about the businessman-turned-president. The latter two also worked with Penguin on a book called Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.
The book, published in September 2024, says that Trump was “discovered” in 2004 by The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, an assertion Trump despises.
And to evidence the fact that he was a self-made man before Burnett came along, Trump devoted much of the rambling and repetitive 85-page legal complaint to listing his successes, primarily those before 2004.
The complaint, filed in Florida, says that the reporters, the paper, and the publisher conspired to “maliciously peddle the fact-free narrative that Burnett somehow ”discovered” President Trump for The Apprentice and magically transformed him into a celebrity—even though at and prior to the time of publication, defendants knew that President Trump was already a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business.”
His team provided an exhaustive list of the president’s books, TV and film appearances as proof of his pre-Apprentice stardom, including, but not limited to; WrestleMania V (1989); Home Alone 2 (1992); Fresh Prince of Bel Air (1994); The Little Rascals (1994); Sex In The City (1998); Miss Universe 2001 (2001); Zoolander (2001) and the Ali G Show (2003).”
In April, director Chris Columbus revealed that he wants to cut President Trump’s cameo from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, saying it’s become a “curse” on the film. In 2020, Columbus told Business Insider that Trump “bullied” his way into the film. Trump denied this, suggesting Columbus essentially begged him to appear.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Trump’s team argued in the complaint, regarding the assertion that Trump was “discovered” by Burnett.
His team offered evidence that, in 1985, CBS’s 60 Minutes even “christened President Trump as a national mega-celebrity.”
Trump’s “hard-earned reputation for excellence,” they said, led Burnett to “seek him out” when the idea for The Apprentice began to formulate. And anyway, he was the star, they added.
“Thanks solely to President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen, The Apprentice generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and remained on television for over thirteen years, with nearly 200 episodes,” the complaint read.
“‘The Apprentice’ represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time,” it added.
Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, Buettner and Craig were contacted for comment ahead of publication. A spokesperson for The Times, responding for its reporters, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s “lawsuit has no merit.”
“It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
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