Before he was the 45th and 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump was a New York real estate tycoon who reportedly insisted on a brief cameo in a highly anticipated film. Now, that movie's director is elaborating on why he's hesitant to cut out Trump's cameo.
The Hill reported Tuesday that director Chris Columbus — who directed the 1992 comedy "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" — is now saying Trump's seven-second cameo in the film has "become this curse" that he feels powerless to remove despite his own personal feelings about the administration. Columbus said that despite calls to issue a new version of the film that doesn't include Trump, he's not rushing to do so.
“I can’t cut it,” Columbus told the San Francisco Chronicle this week. “If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of the country. I’ll be considered sort of not fit to live in the United States, so I’ll have to go back to Italy or something.”
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In the cameo, the film's main character Kevin, who is portrayed by a young Macaulay Caulkin, is walking through the hall of the Plaza Hotel in New York City, when he bumps into Trump — who owned the hotel at the time — and asks him for directions to the lobby. Columbus said that during the pre-production process, Trump insisted that he be given a role.
"“We paid the [filming] fee but he also said, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.’ So we agreed to put him in the movie,” Columbus told Business Insider in 2023. He added that the real estate magnate effectively “bullied his way into the movie.”
At the time, then-former President Trump insisted on his Truth Social platform that the cameo wasn't his idea, writing: “I was very busy and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice but above all, persistent.” He also suggested that the film's high box office performance was due to his brief appearance in the movie, saying "the cameo took off like a rocket and the movie was a big success."
Macaulay Caulkin has backed the idea for issuing a re-cut of the movie without Trump's cameo, endorsing a fan's idea that Trump's appearance should be replaced by a now 44 year-old Caulkin talking to his younger self.
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Click here to read the Hill's full article.