Over 30 years since the release of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, director Chris Columbus still loses sleep over one very short but very infamous moment: Donald Trump’s cameo in the holiday classic. What had been a crowd-pleasing reference to a wealthy New York figure has since been transformed, in Columbus’s own words,
into a “curse” and “an albatross.”
“Years afterwards, it’s something that I wish didn’t exist,”
Columbus informed the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It exists, though. I simply want it to be gone.”
The regret is evident—and with Trump’s perpetually contentious public face, the scene remains to generate debate on global stages everywhere.
If you’ve seen Home Alone 2, you’ll likely remember it. Boy actor Macaulay Culkin’s character, young Kevin McCallister, makes his entrance into the sweeping lobby of New York’s Plaza Hotel, approaches a tall figure in a black coat, and requests directions. The man turns to him and tells him, “Down the hall and to the left.” That’s all—only a couple of seconds of screen time, yet one of the most widely discussed of all movie cameos.
Trump had the Plaza Hotel at the time, and Columbus recounts that the property magnate would permit the filmmakers to film there only if he had a place in the movie.
“We negotiated the fee,”
Columbus said,
“but he insisted, too, that, ‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.’ So we agreed to put him in.”
What began as a commercial transaction became a blight Columbus would give anything to erase. He has even jokingly suggested that removing Trump now would see him “sent out of the country,” a nod, tongue firmly in cheek, to the stridency of Trump’s immigration politics.
Columbus is not alone in having a strong opinion about the cameo, either—Trump has chimed in as well. On a 2023 post to Truth Social, he declared that the production team “begged” him to make an appearance, and even went so far as to claim that his inclusion helped to make the movie a success.
“Another old Hollywood guy who is in desperate need of a Trump publicity fix,”
he declared of Columbus.
And Columbus won’t accept that. Columbus insists that Trump’s involvement was strictly transactional and never a creative choice.
“He did not make the movie a success,”
Columbus stated.
“The reaction of the audience made me keep the scene in. That’s all.”
In the early ’90s, the Trump cameo was a crowd-pleaser. Fans would reportedly cheer during initial test screenings when Trump showed up onscreen. It was a lighthearted, unexpected bonus—a frivolity that didn’t seem to amount to anything at the time. But as Trump’s political career took off, attitudes changed.
Now, a number of fans regard the cameo as a blight on the otherwise classic holiday movie. Even Macaulay Culkin has weighed in, supporting the removal of Trump from the scene. On the social media front, he favored calls to replace Trump digitally—perhaps even using an older iteration of himself.
He’s not the only one. Actor Matt Damon once revealed that Trump routinely asked for cameos in return for access to his developments.
“You had to waste a little bit of time shooting a scene with Donald Trump,”
Damon said, adding that many directors ended up cutting the scenes subsequently—but Columbus did not.
In 2019, the Canadian television network CBC broadcast a cut of Home Alone 2 without Trump’s cameo. The Canadian network explained that the clip had been edited out due to time constraints, and in fact, had been done so in 2014, before Trump’s presidency. Yet the action sparked a heated debate.
Some welcomed the move as a subtle act of defiance against political celebrities, while others condemned it as censorship. Trump reactedit by calling the omission “pathetic,” but those who supported him rallied to what they viewed as a symbolic rebuff.
It was a minor adjustment, but one that exposed the wide gulf in the perception of Trump—particularly when his face appears in the most unlikely of spots, such as a Christmas movie.
Home Alone 2 is still a holiday classic around the English-speaking world. But for the director, that six-second scene still eclipses the overall reputation of the rest of the movie.
“I just want it to be gone,”
Columbus declared—words many fans can now relate to, as they now view the cameo as something more than a humorous scene in a family movie. It’s a testament to the reality that the past truly does catch up to you, particularly if you’re someone as high-profile as Donald Trump.
