‘The Apprentice’ puts on a good show, but that’s not what’s fun about it.
Between 1999 and 2023, Daniel Snyder owned the Washington Commanders, an American football team. His tenure as owner was mired in the kinds of controversies that have become commonplace these days: sexual harassment scandals, hush money settlements, shady financial dealings. Fans hated him for years. In 2023, the union representing NFL players ranked the Commanders as the worst team to play for, and in 2015, Rolling Stone ranked Snyder as the worst owner of any sports team, a placement few would argue against.
It wasn't just the racism, the misogyny, and the stunning lack of empathy for workers and customers that seems to go hand-in-hand with so many lauded American business owners that made Snyder the target of such hate. It’s that he was also bad at his job. You can look up the details of all the incredible ways he mismanaged his team for yourself.
All of this is to say that it’s very hard to find an example of a smart decision made by Snyder, apart from when he sold off the Commanders last year.
Even Snyder’s attempt to get into the filmmaking biz has been a seeming disaster. Synder is an investor in Kinematics — a fledgling production company with only three credits to its name: all low-budget horror flicks made by filmmaker Mark H. Rapaport, who is married to Snyder’s daughter, Tiffanie.
“After reading the script, I saw great potential in The Apprentice and committed the funding needed to get it made”, said Rapaport in a recent statement. This statement was, ironically, made following Kinematics selling its stake in the movie. It had invested approximately $8 million towards the film, but it seems that there were “creative differences” that kept Kinematics from continuing to support the project.
Odd. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that Snyder is a friend of Donald Trump, and contributed financially to his 2016 inaugural committee and his 2020 election campaign? But then, why would Kinematics have backed The Apprentice in the first place? After all, writer Gabriel Sherman announced the project back in 2018, and by then, Sherman had already released his 2014 book The Loudest Voice in the Room about former Fox News CEO and chairman, Roger Ailes.
The book was not a flattering depiction of the television executive, who had to step down from his position in 2016 after seven women accused him of sexual harassment. Why, then, would Trump’s buddy, Daniel Snyder, think he was getting anything other than what he got? Sources say he thought the movie would be a “flattering portrayal” of Trump, which is honestly incredible.
In what world did he think Sherman would look kindly upon Donald Trump? In his book, which released two years before Ailes stepped down, Sherman uncovered that Ailes had offered a female employee a pay rise if she agreed to have sex with him whenever he wanted. In doing this, Sherman proved himself to be the kind of writer who wouldn’t shy away from exposing unsettling truths about the rich and famous.
Hell, Roger Ailes even went on to become an advisor to Trump’s presidential campaign after he left Fox. So, again, why was Snyder reportedly furious after a screening of the The Apprentice? The simplest explanation is likely the truth: Daniel Snyder — an unscrupulous, arrogant, and bad decision-maker — didn’t do the slightest bit of research into what he was spending his money on.
Or it could be even more embarrassing. What if Snyder’s son-in-law, Mark — who speaks effusively about cinema in an interview with ‘Eye for Film’ and saw “great potential” in The Apprentice — knew that his father-in-law wouldn’t fund the project if he knew that Trump would depicted negatively. Maybe he figured the return on investment would be worth obfuscating a few facts. This is pure speculation, of course. All I’m saying is that I’d like to be a fly on the wall at their next family gathering.
Snyder sent cease-and-desist letters to the filmmakers of the movie that he paid for, in an attempt to stop the sale of The Apprentice to any distributors, before eventually selling Kinematics’ stake in the movie. In pulling out of it, Kinematics’ president insisted that none of this had anything to do with Snyder. “All creative and business decisions involving ‘The Apprentice’ have always been and continue to be solely made by Kinematics. Mark and I run our company without the involvement of any other third parties.”
Sure you do, buddy. Sure you do.
Perhaps the strangest thing about all of this is how unsurprising it is. Please, raise your hand if you’re shocked that a billionaire businessman who supports Donald Trump is consistently and publicly making a fool of himself. The veneer that the rich and powerful are in any way particularly smart or gifted is vanishing by the day.
How strange, then, that this façade of exceptionalism is what men like Trump seem to be chasing after. Let the man alone in a room and he’ll start telling the mirror about how smart he thinks he is. This is maybe the biggest difference between how The Apprentice depicts Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn. Trump is a desperate and frantic man, even at the height of his power. Cohn is amoral and despicable but values his privacy and composes himself with the air of a king, even when he’s dying.
Which is worse for society: the evil that conducts itself behind closed doors, or the evil that’s easily ridiculed? It’s amusing and easy to make fun of people like Donald Trump and Daniel Snyder. You and I can write essays about their public humiliations until the end of time, but it achieves very little. Just like how, ultimately, The Apprentice achieves very little. It’s a stylish and interesting movie, but for all the scan lines, old-school aspect ratios, and replicated interviews, I can’t imagine a single person who watches it will have their opinion changed on ol’ 45.
But the same doesn’t hold true for lawyer Roy Cohn. The man is long dead, but there is no doubt that his ilk still exists. Trump is loud and wretched, but he’s a diluted, attention-craving version of what he aspires to be and wouldn’t have been half as successful if it weren’t hard-working people propping him up from the shadows.
Roy Cohn was many things, but he wasn’t bad at his job. Sure, he was a lawyer that repeatedly broke the law, but his job wasn’t ‘lawyer’. His job was ‘get things done.’ He was a despicable and competent man who thrived not by being the guy in the spotlight, but by being the guy who the guy in the spotlight relied on.
In 1951, Roy Cohn was a prosecutor in the now famous trial of the Rosenbergs. Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were both convicted of espionage and sentenced to death. While there is very little doubt that Julius was spying for the Soviet Union, questions have always existed surrounding his wife’s guilt. Cohn has claimed — with pride — that he pushed the judge towards procuring the death penalty for both Julius and Ethel.
In September 2024, a document from the time was released to the public at the request of Ethel and Julius’ sons. It revealed that the Soviet Union did not consider Ethel to be a spy. The US government undoubtedly knew about this document, but Cohn managed to wrangle a death penalty for Ethel out of it regardless.
What did Cohn have to gain from this woman’s death? Nothing tangible, that’s for certain. Perhaps he wanted a fearsome reputation. Maybe he just wanted to see if he could do it. For as transparent as Trump is — he wants people to listen to him and for them to do what he says and to have sex with his daughter — Cohn was somewhat the opposite. The Apprentice doesn’t shy away from exploring the dangers of putting shallow men like Trump in positions of power, but Roy Cohn is the backbone of the movie, just like how people like Roy Cohn are the backbone of Project 2025, which aims to enshrine conservative and far-right ideologies into American law should Trump win the upcoming election.
For all the morons and bad businessmen taking up space in our media landscape, remember that behind them, there could be a Roy Cohn in their shadow — someone who gets things done and isn’t in it to be famous. The Apprentice did not change my view on Trump, but it did serve as a reminder that he’s just one man, and that he didn’t form in a vacuum.
So, let’s all laugh at the Daniel Snyders and Elon Musks and Donald Trumps of the world. They deserve it.
Just make sure to check the dark corners while you're at it.
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