The appearance of the future US president only lasts a few moments. Nevertheless, Donald Trump’s cameo in the Christmas classic “Kevin – Alone in New York” is now a new topic of conversation.
A Canadian broadcaster omitted the scene in which Trump appeared in its recent broadcast – and now had to justify it. CBC does not want to suspect a political message behind it. The scene was cut out in the course of editing the film for television broadcast long before Trump was elected US president, the broadcaster said on Thursday.
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Cinema films are often edited for broadcast on television so that they fit into the program in terms of their length, said CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson. The scene with Trump is one of several that were cut from the 1992 film. None of these scenes are “essential to the plot”.
Trump Junior is upset, Trump Senior is not
The film was edited in 2014, after CBC first acquired the broadcasting rights, the spokesman emphasized. Trump was elected President in November 2016.
Users of the online networks had criticized the omission of the Trump scene as politically motivated. Donald Trump Junior, the eldest son of the US President, also joined the debate and described the removal of the sequence as “pathetic”.
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Trump had recently shown himself proud to appear in the hugely popular comedy. The film is “one of the greatest” Christmas successes. It was “an honor for him to have been part of such a thing,” said the US President in an interview with US soldiers on Tuesday. However, he himself apparently recognized that the debate about his absence in the CBC version also has its comical sides and tweeted: “The film will never be the same again (just kidding).”
Appearance was apparently due to pressure from Trump
Trump appears very briefly in the comedy. The film character Kevin, whom his parents had forgotten as in the previous film “Kevin – Alone at Home” from 1990, spends the holidays alone in a hotel. He can’t find his way there and asks Trump, who was wearing a long coat and a red tie back then, for directions. Trump then describes the direction in a short sentence.
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However, the real estate mogul at the time apparently did not get the role without any personal assistance. Shortly before, he had bought the New York “Plaza Hotel” where filming was taking place. As the actor Matt Damon said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Trump only allowed the filming to continue on one condition: he wanted to be in the film himself.
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