During the 1990s, Donald Trump made cameos in a slew of movies and TV shows, including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Nanny, and Zoolander. It was a savvy bit of self-promotion, helped by the fact that reportedly Trump would often require a cameo in any production filmed at one of his properties. Trump also popped up in the 1992 holiday classic, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. In an approximately seven-second long scene, Trump gives direction to Macaulay Culkin’s character Kevin McAllister. And when the Canadian Broadcasting Company aired the movie this Christmas Eve, conservative media in the U.S. lit up over the fact that Trump was nowhere to be seen.
Responding to the cut on Thursday morning, the hosts of Fox & Friends decried the “censorship” of such a “happy movie.” Guest and conservative pundit Mark Steyn said, “I think they’re actually terrified that people will remember that before he was the new Hitler, he was a beloved mainstream cultural figure.”
The outcry didn’t stop with Fox & Friends. Later on Thursday, Charlie Kirk, head of the conservative Turning Points USA, complained on Twitter, writing, “How much does the left hate Trump? The Canadian Broadcast Company is removing his 7 second cameo from Home Alone 2 claiming it was ‘cut for time’ It was 7 seconds long. It wasn’t cut for time. It was cut because it humanizes a man the left loves to dehumanize. Shameful!” Thirty minutes later, Trump himself weighed in, appearing to blame Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. He tweeted, “I guess Justin T doesn’t much like my making him pay up on NATO or Trade!” And in a lengthy Instagram post, Donald Trump Jr. wrote, “Absolutely pathetic. The liberal media like @cbc is where Trump Derangement Syndrome manifests itself fully.”
Despite the outrage, and Kirk’s bizarre insistence that the scene “wasn’t cut for time,” the scene was cut for exactly that reason. In a statement, CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson wrote, “As is often the case with feature films adapted for television, Home Alone 2 was edited for time. The scene with Donald Trump was one of several that were cut from the movie as none of them were integral to the plot. These edits were done in 2014, when we first acquired the film and before Mr Trump was elected president.” The edits also would have occurred at least a year before Trudeau was elected.
Reporter Daniel Dale, whose beat largely consists of fact-checking Trump in real time, has also found social media posts dating back to 2015 of viewers pointing out that Trump’s scene had been cut—along with several others, including “Kevin going swimming,” “THE TURTLE DOVE EXCHANGE,” and “a scene in which a homeless man warns Macaulay Culkin’s protagonist, Kevin McCallister, to ‘Watch it, kid.'”
