OAN Staff Abril Elfi
4:50 PM – Tuesday, April 15, 2025
“Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” director Chris Columbus recently stated that he fears President Donald Trump’s administration would deport him if he chose to cut the president’s cameo scene from the movie.
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Columbus was born in Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio, and he was first inspired to make films after seeing “The Godfather” at age 15, he says.
On Monday, during an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, the filmmaker, 66, discussed President Trump’s seven-second appearance in the 1992 feature picture.
Columbus noted that Trump’s cameo has essentially “become this curse.”
“It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone,” he added.
To “become an albatross,” as he stated, metaphorically means to become a heavy burden or impediment, especially one that causes guilt or shame.
“I can’t cut it. If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of the country,” the director quipped, referring to Trump’s past remarks about mass deportations. “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.”
Although Columbus was born in Pennsylvania, he is of Italian descent, from his grandparents — according to reports. The director has no relation to Italian explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus.
The “Home Alone 2” film follows the mischievous “Kevin McCallister,” played by a young Macaulay Culkin, when he accidentally boards a flight to New York, instead of Miami, with the rest of the McCallister family. Kevin decides to make the most of the accident and travels to the Plaza Hotel, where he runs into the now-President Donald Trump. Kevin asks for directions, and the two have a brief chat.
Meanwhile, the director claims that Trump, who owned The Plaza Hotel at the time, “bullied his way into the movie.”
“We paid the fee [to film at The Plaza], but [Trump] also said, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie,’” Columbus told Business Insider in 2020.
Trump, however, disputed the director’s claims and said in a 2023 post on Truth Social that Columbus was “begging” him to appear in “Home Alone 2.”
“I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent,” Trump wrote. “I agreed, and the rest is history! That little cameo took off like a rocket, and the movie was a big success, and still is, especially around Christmas time.
“People call me whenever it is aired. Now, however, 30 years later, Columbus (what was his real name?) put out a statement that I bullied myself into the movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. That cameo helped make the movie a success … Just another Hollywood guy from the past looking for a quick fix of Trump publicity for himself!”
After Trump became U.S. president in his first term, “Home Alone 2” fans continuously called for Columbus to remove him from the movie.
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