Before he was taking his daddy issues out on all of humanity, US President Donald Trump liked to get his kicks by making cameo appearances in Hollywood films. 

The 45th President of the union made brief appearances (as himself, of course) in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and the Hugh Grant comedy film Two Weeks Notice. He also showed up in a variety of TV shows, including Sex and the CitySpin City, The Drew Carey Show, The Nanny and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. 

One of Trump’s most memorable cameos was in the 2001 slapstick comedy, Zoolander. Trump and his wife Melania are seen on the red carpet at the VH1 Fashion Awards. It’s part of a montage affirming the title character’s preeminence in the male modelling world. “Look, without Derek Zoolander, male modelling wouldn’t be what it is today,” says Trump. Oh goodness, he seemed so harmless then.

Anyway, people have been petitioning Ben Stiller – who not only portrayed Derek Zoolander, but also directed the film – to release an updated version that excludes Trump’s cameo. Fair enough, these days the very sight of DJT summons a sweeping sense of malaise, not least for members of the various minorities the president routinely attacks and vilifies.

But Stiller’s not interested in engaging in this sort of revisionist history. “I’ve had people reach out to me and say, ‘You should edit Donald Trump out of Zoolander,'” he told The New Abnormal podcast. “But at the end of the day, that was a time when that exists and that happened.”

Trump apparently wasn’t a fan of the Zoolander sequelwhich came out in 2016. Shortly after Trump’s election, cable news host Chris Matthews told Stephen Colbert about an off air conversation he had with Trump.

“He said Zoolander worked. Zoolander 2 did not work,” said Matthews. “He explained it to me – it had to do with the timing. He said there’s a certain moment when people thought really good looking models were stupid and that would be funny. And then it stopped [working].”

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