MONDO EXTRAS

"What do you mean, 'name it after us'?" Papa-T asks Donald in a later conversation taking place in the former's office. (Don't try to follow all the transitions too carefully -- this movie is trying to cram in everything that happened to Trump between birth and Burnett, so there's a lot of jumping around.) Donald doesn't know why they can't name it after themselves. "It's not done!" his father says. "Why not?" Donald asks. You know, some men see tacky things that are and ask why; Donald Trump sees tacky things that never were and asks why not. His father insists that the convention center will clearly be a total failure, so there's no point in tying their names to it for all eternity. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking Papa-T would be the best student in his parenting class. "I never should have introduced you to the mayor," Papa-T says scornfully. "It's not going to happen, Donny," he continues, insisting that New York is in an economic freefall, blah dee blah. "You have to step over a body just to buy a pack of cigarettes!" he points out. Manhattan has apparently really improved since this movie was set, because I was there this week for several days, and I didn't step over one body. Papa-T insists that nobody will give money for this ill-conceived boondoggle, meaning that clearly, Papa-T has very limited experience with public financing of construction proposals, a field where "boondoggle" is treated the way normal people treat the words "chocolate" and "free hookers."

We return to the press conference, in a move that's a little disorienting, and when it's over, Donald Trump is leaving the event when he's approached by a slumming Saul Rubinek, who introduces himself as Peter Wennik. But Trump doesn't want to shake his hand, leading to the movie's one outright mention of Trump's germophobia. "I'm afraid people don't wash properly," he says by way of explanation. Trump then exposits that Wennik (who, as I understand it, is one of those "composite characters" we've heard about, meaning there is no such person) is "the lawyer." Trump has to explain this, because lawyers don't wear little railroad engineer caps or anything else the writers could think of to use as a visual cue. Gavels are a tiny bit inappropriate, and people find them unsettling. Papa-T has told Donald, we learn, that Wennik is "amazing," "crazy," and nearly in charge of the city. "True, untrue, and...true," Wennik says. What we are not told is how, exactly, Wennik "practically run[s] the city," something that might have made a nice tidbit to accompany all that riveting business about germs. Wennik makes various ominous and possibly promising (hey, it can be a fine line) comments to Trump about his ambition, and hands him a card, saying, "I can usually be found here." I suspect that card says, "Lair Of Intrigue." But before we can hear more, they part, as they must, in order that we may later see them encounter each other again.