Donald Trump fired back Wednesday at a resurfaced interview with “Home Alone 2” director Chris Columbus asserting that he “bullied his way into the movie.” The former president said that, in fact, he “didn’t want to do it,” but “Columbus and others were begging me to make a cameo appearance.”
Posting to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump recalled, “30 years ago (how time flies!) director Chris Columbus and others were begging me to make a cameo appearance in ‘Home Alone 2.’ They rented the Plaza Hotel in New York, which I owned at the time. I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent. I agreed, and the rest is history!”
Trump went on to applaud the film for being a Christmas classic, adding that he gets phone calls from fans “whenever it is aired.” He also believed that his seven seconds of screen time were critical to the 1992 sequel’s box office success.
“That little cameo took off like a rocket, and the movie was a big success, and still is, especially around Christmas time,” he wrote. “People call me whenever it is aired. Now, however, 30 years later, Columbus (what was his real name?) put out a statement that I bullied myself into the movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. That cameo helped make the movie a success, but if they felt bullied, or didn’t want me, why did they put me in, and keep me there, for over 30 years? Because I was, and still am, great for the movie, that’s why!”
He concluded that Columbus was “just another Hollywood guy from the past looking for a quick fix of Trump publicity for himself!”
Business Insider resurfaced a 2020 interview with the director earlier this week in which he accused the former president of strong-arming his way into acting opposite the film’s child star Macaulay Culkin. Trump owned the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan at the time the holiday sequel was shot — he would be forced to sell the iconic property out of bankruptcy at an $83 million loss a few years later — and he reportedly negotiated the brief appearance to allow the film to shoot there.
“We wanted to shoot in the lobby. We couldn’t rebuild The Plaza on a soundstage,” Columbus told Business Insider.
Typically, that would require paying a fee to use the location, but that wasn’t all Trump wanted. “We paid the fee, but he also said, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie,’” Columbus continued. “So we agreed to put him in the movie.”
Trump at that time was a regular on the New York tabloid gossip pages but not yet the famous host of “The Apprentice,” which premiered in 2004.
The responses on Truth Social unsurprisingly either supported Trump’s posts or were directed at political issues. But X users mocked the 45th president’s belief that his brief appearance impacted the box office take of the family film, which pulled in $31 million in its opening weekend and netted $359 million worldwide.
“His entire post here is the definition of triggered,” one X user quipped.
“God bless those magnificent, awkwardly vocalized seven words,” another commented sarcastically. “The movie would’ve tanked without them.”
“The sad thing is that there will be some people who will think that this is true,” another user posted.
Columbus himself did hint that the clip was kept in the film because audiences responded when it was shown the first time.
“People cheered when Trump showed up onscreen,” Columbus said. “So I said to my editor, ‘Leave him in the movie. It’s a moment for the audience.’ But he did bully his way into the movie.”
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