Years before he was elected the US President, Donald Trump was deeply immersed in the world of entertainment. Besides hosting popular reality show The Apprentice on NBC for over a decade, he’s also appeared in several movies as himself, like Chris Columbus’ 1992 cult Christmas comedy Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy Zoolander, and Marc Lawrence’s 2002 romantic comedy Two Weeks Notice, among others.
A film role that he shot for, but was chopped off from the final cut was in Oliver Stone’s 2010 film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the sequel to his 1987 seminal crime drama Wall Street. In the sequel, Trump shared screen space with Josh Brolin, and the two went on to become thick pals after filming. However, now, Brolin has a different opinion of Trump and his politics.
“I’m not scared of Trump, because even though he says he’s staying forever, it’s just not going to happen,” Brolin told The Independent, adding, “And if it does, then I’ll deal with that moment. But having been a friend of Trump before he was president, I know a different guy. Now it’s power unmitigated — it’s unregulated.”
Josh Brolin can, however, analyze why Donald Trump has been reelected as the US President. “There is no greater genius than him in marketing. He takes the weakness of the general population and fills it,” said Brolin, adding, “That’s why I think a lot of people feel that they have a mascot in him. I think it’s much less about Trump than it is about the general population and their need for validation.”
Back in 2020, Brolin had criticized his former friend for the first time in public. “The America that was great was never based on creating hate and conspiracy in order to win. There have been a few, but none has lasted. Donald Trump has lied over 50,000 documented times, but we still are willing to let it go because he speaks to an American demographic that no longer felt masculine,” he had written on Instagram.
In his next, Rian Johnson’s whodunit Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Josh Brolin plays Jefferson Wicks, a priest in a New York church who gets murdered. After some eagle-eyed observers speculated that his portrayal is based on Donald Trump, Brolin refused, adding, “I could make something up and say it was rooted in a kind of Trumpian greed.”
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Wake Up Dead Man is the third instalment in Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig’s whodunit franchise. The threequel will see Daniel Craig reprise his role of detective Benoit Blanc, as he’ll be joined by another star-studded ensemble including Brolin, Josh O’ Connor, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and Cailee Spaney. It is slated to release on Netflix on December 12.
