Home Alone 2 director Chris Columbus wants to cut Donald Trump's cameo but fears he’ll be deported

The director of Home Alone 2 hates the infamous Donald Trump cameo in the Macaulay Culkin movie but can’t bring himself to cut it.

But that’s not out of any fidelity to art.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Chris Columbus said, “I can’t cut it. If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of the country. I’ll be considered sort of not fit to live in the United States, so I’ll have to go back to Italy or something.”

Columbus, who also directed the first two Harry Potter films, has Italian and Czech ancestry but is an American citizen who was born in Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio.

Mr Trump appears in Home Alone 2 in a seven-second cameo when Culkin’s character, Kevin, is wandering through New York’s iconic Plaza Hotel. At the time, Trump owned the Plaza and, according to Columbus, made his personal involvement a condition of filming.

“We paid the fee, but he also said, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie,” Columbus said in 2020. Mr Trump disputed this and claimed the production had “begged” him to be in it.

Columbus said the cameo became an unintentional comedic moment as audiences have reacted to it with mirth. But he would still rather it not be part of the movie.

“Years later, it’s become this curse. It’s become this thing that I wish it was not there,” he said.

“What’s going through this guy’s mind? He said I was lying. I’m not lying. He said I begged him to be in the movie, but there’s no world I would ever beg a non-actor to be in a movie.

“But we were desperate to get the Plaza Hotel. But it’s there. It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”

Columbus’s remarks about being sent out of the country, while made somewhat in jest, reflects the chilling effect Mr Trump’s temper, propensity to litigate grudges, and his administration’s aggressive pursuit of dissenters have had on the wider culture.

Among those targeted are a Turkish international student at Tufts University with a valid visa who was seized by masked officers in an unmarked car and held in detention. Her “crime” was an opinion piece she co-authored for a student publication that labelled Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”.

Another case involved one Maryland man’s deportation to El Savador in a case of mistaken identity. Despite court orders that he be returned, the US government has abrogated its responsibility to recover him, and El Salvador has said it won’t give him back.

In a White House meeting with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, Mr Trump said he liked the idea of sending US citizens to notorious El Salvadorian prisons if the law allowed him.

The US government has enacted pugnacious deportation measures. According to NBC News, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement department has deported 11,000 people in February and 12,300 in March.